A  LIBRARIAN'S 
OPEN   SHELF 


si?  iiwi 


I!  mi! 


. 


A  LIBRARIAN'S  OPEN 
SHELF 

ESSAYS  ON  VARIOUS  SUBJECTS 


A  LIBRARIAN'S 
OPEN   SHELF 

ESSAYS  ON  VARIOUS  SUBJECTS 
ARTHUR  E.  BOSTWICK,  PH.  D. 


THE  H.  W.  WILSON  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 

1920 


Z 


PREFACE 

The  papers  here  gathered  together  represent  the 
activities  of  a  librarian  in  directions  outside  the 
boundaries  of  his  professional  career,  although  the 
influences  of  it  may  be  detected  in  them  here  and 
there.  Except  for  those  influences  they  have  little 
connection  and  the  transition  of  thought  and  treat 
ment  from  one  to  another  may  occasionally  seem 
violent.  It  may,  however,  serve  to  protect  the  reader 
from  the  assaults  of  monotony.  A.  E.  B. 


CONTENTS 

Do  HEADERS  KEAD  3 

(The  Critic,  July,  1901,  p.  67-70) 

WHAT  MAKES  PEOPLE  BEAD  11 

(The  Book  Lover,  January,  1904,  p.  12-16) 

THE  PASSING  OF  THE  POSSESSIVE;  A  STUDY  OF 

BOOK  TITLES  19 

(The  Book  Buyer,  June,  1897,  p.  500-1) 

^SELECTIVE  EDUCATION   23 

(Educational  Review,  November,  1907, 
p.  365-73) 

THE  USES  OF  FICTION  35 

Read  before  the  American  Library  Associa 
tion,  Asheville  Conference,  May  28,  1907. 
(A.  L.  A.  Bulletin,  July,  1907,  p.  183-7) 

THE  VALUE  OF  ASSOCIATION   45 

Delivered  before  the  Library  Associations  of 
Iowa,  Nebraska,  Kansas,  Missouri,  Indiana 
and  Ohio,  October  9-18,  1907.  (Library 
Journal,  January,  1908,  p.  3-9) 

[ODERN  EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 63 

(Notes  and  News,  Montclair,  N.  J.,  July, 
1908) 

SOME  ECONOMIC  FEATURES  OF  LIBRARIES 67 

Head  at  the  opening  of  the  Chestnut  Hill 
Branch,  Philadelphia  Free  Library,  Jan 
uary  22,  1909.  (Library  Journal,  February, 
1909,  p.  48-52) 


M( 


viii  CONTENTS 

SIMON    NEWCOMB:    AMERICA'S    FOREMOST    AS 
TRONOMER  79 

(Review  of  Reviews,  August,  1909,  p.  1714) 

THE  COMPANIONSHIP  OF  BOOKS 89 

Read  before  the  Pacific  Northwest  Library 
Association,  June,  1910.  (P.  N.  W.  L.  A. 
Proceedings,  1910,  p.  8-23) 

ATOMIC  THEORIES  OF  ENERGY  113 

Bead  before  the  St.  Louis  Academy  of  Sci 
ence.  (The  Monist,  October,  1912,  p.  580-5) 

THE  ADVERTISEMENT  OF  IDEAS 127 

(Minnesota  Library  Notes  and  News,  De 
cember,  1912,  p.  190-7) 

THE  PUBLIC  LIBRARY,,  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL,  AND 

THE  SOCIAL  CENTER  MOVEMENT  145 

Read  before  the  National  Education  Asso 
ciation.  (N.  E.  A.  Proceedings,  1912, 
p.  240-5) 

THE  SYSTEMATIZATION  OF  VIOLENCE  157 

(St.  Louis  Mirror,  July  18,  1913) 

THE  ART  OF  RE-READING 163 

HISTORY  AND  HEREDITY    179 

Read  before  the  New  England  Society  of 
St.  Louis.  (New  England  Society  of  St. 
Louis.  Proceedings,  29th  year,  p.  13-20) 

WHAT  THE  FLAG  STANDS  FOR 187 

A  Flag  Day  address  in  St.  Peter's  church, 
St.  Louis.  (St.  Louis  Republic,  June  15, 
1914) 


CONTENTS  ix 

THE  PEOPLE'S  SHARE  IN  THE  PUBLIC  LIBRARY..  197 
Head    before   the    Chicago    Women's   Club, 
January  6,  1915.     (Library  Journal,  April, 
1915,  p.  227-32) 

SOME  TENDENCIES  OF  AMERICAN  THOUGHT  .....  213 

•Read  before  the  New  York  Library  Associa 

tion  at  Squirrel  Inn,  Haines  Falls,  Septem 

ber  28,  1915.    (Library  Journal,  November, 

1915,  p.  771-7) 

DRUGS  AND  THE  MAN   .......................  229 

A  Commencement  address  to  the  graduating 
class  of  the  School  of  Pharmacy,  St.  Louis, 
May  19,  1915.  (Journal  of  the  American 
Pharmaceutical  Association,  August,  1915, 
/  p.  915-22) 

How  THE  COMMUNITY  EDUCATES  ITSELF  .......  243 

Read  before  the  American  Library  Associa 
tion,  Asbury  Park,  N.  J.,  June  27,  1916. 
(Library  Journal,  August,  1916,  p.  541-7) 

CLUBWOMEN'S  BEADING  ......................  259 

(The  Bookman,  January-March,  1915, 
p.  515-21,  642-7,  64-70) 

BOOKS  FOR  TIRED  EYES   .....................  301 

(Yale  Review,  January,  1917,  p.  358-68) 

THE  MAGIC  CASEMENT   ......................  313 

Read  before  the  Town  and  Gown  Club,  St. 
Louis. 

A  WORD  TO  BELIEVERS  ......................  329 

Address  at  the  closing  section  of  the  Church 
School  of  Religious  Instruction. 


INDEX 


A  LIBRARIAN'S  OPEN 
SHELF 

ESSAYS  ON  VARIOUS  SUBJECTS 


DO   READERS   READ? 

Those  who  are  interested  in  the  proper  use  of 
our  libraries  are  asking  continually,  "What  do  read 
ers  read?"  and  the  tables  of  class-percentages  in  the 
annual  reports  of  those  institutions  show  that  libra 
rians  are  at  least  making  an  attempt  to  satisfy  these 
queries.  But  a  question  that  is  still  more  funda 
mental  and  quite  as  vital  is:  Do  readers  read  at  all? 
This  is  not  a  paradox,  but  a  common-sense  question, 
as  the  following  suggestive  little  incident  will  show. 
The  librarian-in-charge  of  a  crowded  branch  cir 
culating-library  in  New  York  City  had  occasion  to 
talk,  not  long  ago,  to  one  of  her  "star"  borrowers,  a 
youth  who  had  taken  out  his  two  good  books  a  week 
regularly  for  nearly  a  year  and  whom  she  had  looked 
upon  as  a  model — so  much  so  that  she  had  never 
thought  it  necessary  to  advise  with  him  regarding 
his  reading.  In  response  to  a  question  this  lad  made 
answer  somewhat  as  follows:  "Yes,  ma'am,  I'm  do 
ing  pretty  well  with  my  reading.  I  think  I  should 
get  on  nicely  if  I  could  only  once  manage  to  read  a 
book  through ;  but  somehow  I  can't  seem  to  do  it." 
This  boy  had  actually  taken  to  his  home  nearly  a 
hundred  books,  returning  each  regularly  and  bor 
rowing  another,  without  reading  to  the  end  of  a 
single  one  of  them. 

That  this  case  is  not  isolated  and  abnormal,  but 
is  typical  of  the  way  in  which  a  large  class  of  read 
ers  treat  books,  there  is,  as  we  shall  see,  only  too 
much  reason  to  believe. 

The  facts  are  peculiarly  hard  to  get  at.  At  first 
sight  there  would  seem  to  be  no  way  to  find  out 


4  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

whether  the  books  that  our  libraries  circulate  have 
been  read  th rough  from  cover  to  cover,  or  only  half 
through,  or  not  at  all.  To  be  sure,  each  borrower 
might  be  questioned  on  the  subject  as  he  returned 
his  book,  but  this  method  would  be  resented  as  in 
quisitorial,  and  after  all  there  would  be  no  certainty 
that  the  data  so  gathered  were  true.  By  counting 
the  stamps  on  the  library  book-card  or  dating-slip 
we  can  tell  how  many  times  a  book  has  been  bor 
rowed,  but  this  gives  us  no  information  about  wheth 
er  it  has  or  has  not  been  read.  Fortunately  for  our 
present  purpose,  however,  many  works  are  published 
in  a  series  of  volumes,  each  of  wrhich  is  charged  sepa 
rately,  and  an  examination  of  the  different  slips  will 
tell  us  whether  or  not  the  whole  work  has  been  read 
through  by  all  those  who  borrowed  it.  If,  for  in 
stance  in  a  two-volume  work  each  volume  has  gone 
out  twenty  times,  twenty  borrowers  either  have  read 
it  through  or  have  stopped  somewhere  in  the  second 
volume,  while  if  the  first  volume  is  charged  twenty 
times  and  the  second  only  fourteen,  it  is  certain  that 
six  of  those  who  took  out  the  first  volume  did  not  get 
as  far  as  the  second.  In  works  of  more  than  two 
volumes  we  can  tell  with  still  greater  accuracy  at 
what  point  the  reader's  interest  was  insufficient  to 
carry  him  further. 

Such  an  investigation  has  been  made  of  all  works 
in  more  than  one  volume  contained  in  seven  branches 
of  the  Brooklyn  Public  Library,  and  with  very  few 
exceptions  it  has  been  found  that  each  successive 
volume  in  a  series  has  been  read  by  fewer  persons 
than  the  one  immediately  preceding.  What  is  true 
of  books  in  more  than  one  volume  is  presumably  also 
true,  although  perhaps  in  a  less  degree,  of  one-vol 
ume  works,  although  we  have  no  means  of  showing 
it  directly.  Among  the  readers  of  every  book,  then, 


DO    HEADERS    READ?  5 

there  are  generally  some  who,  for  one  reason  or  other, 
do  not  read  it  to  the  end.  Our  question,  "Do  read 
ers  read?"  is  thus  answered  in  the  negative  for  a 
large  number  of  cases.  The  supplementary  question, 
"Why  do  not  readers  read?"  occurs  at  once,  but  an 
attempt  to  answer  it  would  take  us  rather  too  deep 
ly  into  psychology.  Whether  this  tendency  to  leave 
the  latter  part  of  books  unread  is  increasing  or  not 
we  can  tell  only  by  repeating  the  present  investiga 
tion  at  intervals  of  a  year  or  more.  The  probability 
is  that  it  is  due  to  pure  lack  of  interest.  For  some 
reason  or  other,  many  persons  begin  to  read  books 
that  fail  to  hold  their  attention.  In  a  large  number 
of  cases  this  is  doubtless  due  to  a  feeling  that  one 
"ought  to  read"  certain  books  and  certain  classes  of 
books.  A  sense  of  duty  carries  the  reader  part  way 
through  his  task,  but  he  weakens  before  he  has  fin 
ished  it. 

This  shows  how  necessary  it  is  to  stimulate  one's 
general  interest  in  a  subject  before  advising  him  to 
read  a  book  that  is  not  itself  calculated  to  arouse 
and  sustain  that  interest.  Possibly  the  modern 
newspaper  habit,  with  its  encouragement  of  slipshod 
reading,  may  play  its  part  in  producing  the  general 
result,  and  doubtless  a  careful  detailed  investigation 
would  reveal  still  other  partial  causes,  but  the  chief 
and  determining  cause  must  be  lack  of  interest. 
And  it  is  to  be  feared  that  instead  of  taking  mea 
sures  to  arouse  a  permanent  interest  in  good  litera 
ture,  which  would  in  itself  lead  to  the  reading  of 
standard  works  and  would  sustain  the  reader  until 
he  had  finished  his  task,  we  have  often  tried  to  re 
place  such  an  interest  by  a  fictitious  and  temporary 
stimulus,  due  to  appeals  to  duty,  or  to  that  vague 
and  confused  idea  that  one  should  "improve  one's 
mind,"  unaccompanied  by  any  definite  plan  of  ways 


6  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

and  means.  There  is  no  more  powerful  moral  motor 
than  duty,  but  it  loses  its  force  when  we  try  to  apply 
it  to  cases  that  lie  without  the  province  of  ethics. 
The  man  who  has  no  permanent  interest  in  histori 
cal  literature,  and  who  is  impelled  to  begin  a  six- 
volume  history  because  he  conceives  it  to  be  his 
"duty"  to  read  it,  is  apt  to  conclude,  before  he  has 
finished  the  second  volume,  that  his  is  a  case  where 
inclination  (or  in  this  instance  disinclination)  is  the 
proper  guide. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  formation  of  a  cultivated 
and  permanent  taste  for  good  reading  is  generally  a 
matter  of  lifelong  education.  It  must  be  begun 
when  the  child  reads  his  first  book.  An  encourag 
ing  sign  for  the  future  is  the  care  that  is  now  taken 
in  all  good  libraries  to  supervise  the  reading  of  chil 
dren  and  to  provide  for  them  special  quarters  and 
facilities.  A  somewrhat  disheartening  circumstance, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  the  multiplication  of  annotated 
and  abbreviated  children's  editions  of  all  sorts  of 
works  that  were  read  by  the  last  generation  of  chil 
dren  without  any  such  treatment.  This  kind  of 
boned  chicken  may  be  very  well  for  the  mental  in 
valid,  but  the  ordinary  child  prefers  to  separate  his 
meat  from  the  "drumstick"  by  his  own  unaided  ef 
fort,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  better  for  him 
to  do  so. 

In  the  following  table,  the  average  circulation  of 
first  volumes,  second  volumes,  etc.,  is  given  for  each 
of  seven  classes  of  works.  The  falling  off  from  vol 
ume  to  volume  is  noticeable  in  each  class.  It  is  most 
marked  in  science,  and  least  so,  as  might  be  expect 
ed,  in  fiction.  Yet  it  is  remarkable  that  there  should 
be  any  falling  off  at  all  in  fiction.  The  record  shows 
that  the  proportion  of  readers  who  cannot  even  read 
to  the  end  of  a  novel  is  relatively  large.  These  are 


DO    READERS    READ?  7 

doubtless  the  good  people  who  speak  of  Dickens  as 
"solid  reading"  and  who  regard  Thackeray  with  as 
remote  an  eye  as  they  do  Gibbon.  For  such  "The 
Duchess"  furnishes  good  mental  pabulum,  and  Miss 
Corelli  provides  flights  into  the  loftier  regions  of 
philosophy. 


CLASS 


History 10.1   6.9  4.9  4.4  4.6  4.3   2.5   2.8   i.o    0.5    i.o   3.0 

Biography 7.2   5.1  3.0  2.3    1.6    i.o    1.6   1.2    i.o    2. 

Travel 9.2   7.9 

Literature 7-3    5-9  3-5   3-8    5-3   6.619.015.021.0 

Arts 47   37  3-O 

Sciences 5.2   2.7  1.5 

Fiction 22.0  18.9  15.8  16.   26.    16. 

The  figures  in  the  table,  as  has  been  stated,  are 
averages,  and  the  number  of  cases  averaged  decreases 
rapidly  as  we  reach  the  later  volumes,  because,  of 
course,  the  number  of  works  that  run  beyond  four 
or  five  volumes  is  relatively  small.  Hence  the  figures 
for  the  higher  volumes  are  irregular.  Any  volume 
may  have  been  withdrawn  separately  for  reference 
without  any  intention  of  reading  its  companions. 
Among  the  earlier  volumes  such  use  counts  for  little, 
owing  to  the  large  number  of  volumes  averaged, 
while  it  may  and  does  make  the  figures  for  the  later 
volumes  irregular.  Thus,  under  History  the  high 
number  in  the  twelfth  column  represents  one-twelfth 
volume  of  Froude,  which  was  taken  out  three  times, 
evidently  for  separate  reference,  as  the  eleventh  was 
withdrawn  but  once.  Furthermore,  apart  from  this 
irregularity,  the  figures  for  the  later  volumes  are 
relatively  large,  for  a  work  in  many  volumes  is  apt 
to  be  a  standard,  and  although  its  use  falls  rapidly 
from  start  to  finish  enough  readers  persevere  to  the 


8  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

end  to  make  the  final  averages  compare  unduly  well 
with  the  initial  ones  where  the  high  use  of  the  same 
work  is  averaged  in  with  smaller  use  of  dozens  of 
other  first  and  second  volumes.  That  the  falling  off 
from  beginning  to  end  in  such  long  works  is  much 
more  striking  than  would  appear  from  the  averages 
alone  may  be  seen  from  the  following  records  of  sepa 
rate  works  in  numerous  volumes: 


OOOOOOOOCQ 

HISTORY  >>>>>>>>>> 

Grote,    "Greece"    n     6    5    2     I     o     I     I     I     o 

Bancroft,    "United    States" 22  10    6    8  10    8 

Hume,    "England"    24    7     5    2     i     i 

Gibbon,   "Rome"    38  12    7     3    4    6 

Motley,    "United   Netherlands" 7111 

Prescott,  "Ferdinand  and  Isabella"  .  20    4    2 

Carlyle,   "French   Revolution" 18  10    8 

McCarthy,   "Our   Own  Times" 27    8  n 

BIOGRAPHY 

Bourienne,  "Memoirs  of  Napoleon".  19  18    9    7 

Longfellow's   "Life"    6    4    2 

Nicolay  and  Hay,  "Lincoln" 63322221     i     2 

Carlyle,  "Frederick  the  Great" 7    3    2    2    2 

FICTION 

Dumas,  "Vicomte  de  Bragelonne". .  31  30  24  22  21  16 

Dumas,  "Monte  Cristo" 27  17  18 

Dickens,  "Our  Mutual  Friend" 5410 

Stowe,  "Uncle  Tom's   Cabin" 37  24 

Of  course,  these  could  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 
They  are  sufficiently  interesting  apart  from  all  com 
ment.  One  would  hardly  believe  without  direct  evi 
dence  that  of  thirty-one  persons  who  began  one  of 
Dumas's  romances  scarcely  half  would  read  it  to  the 
end,  or  that  not  one  of  five  persons  who  essayed 
Dickens's  "Mutual  Friend"  would  succeed  in  getting 
through  it. 

Those  who  think  that  there  can  be  no  pathos  in 
statistics  are  invited  to  ponder  this  table  deeply. 


DO    BEADEKS    EEAD?  9 

Can  anyone  think  unmoved  of  those  two  dozen  read 
ers  who,  feeling  impelled  by  desire  for  an  intellec 
tual  stimulant  to  take  up  Hume,  found  therein  a 
soporific  instead  and  fell  by  the  wayside? 

A  curious  fact  is  that  the  tendency  to  attempt  to 
"begin  at  the  beginning"  is  so  strong  that  it  some 
times  extends  to  collected  works  in  which  there  is 
no  sequence  from  volume  to  volume.  Thus  we  have 
the  following: 


Chaucer,    "Poetical    Works"  ......  38  9      5 

Milton,  "Poetical  Works"  ........  19  8 

Longfellow,  "Poetical  Works"  ____  14  15      2     10      3      3 

Emerson,    "Essays"    .............  48  13 

Ward,  "English  Poets"   .........  13  2      6 

There  are  of  course  exceptions  to  the  rule  that 
circulation  decreases  steadily  from  volume  to  vol 
ume.  Here  are  a  few: 

> 


Fiske,  "Old  Virginia"   ...............  26  24 

Spears,   "History  of  the    Navy"    ----  44  39      36      36 

Andrews,  "Last  Quarter  Century"  ____  8  8 

Kennan,    "Siberia"    .......  ...........  15  13 

In  the  case  of  the  two-volume  works  the  interest- 
sustaining  power  may  not  always  be  as  great  as 
would  appear,  because  when  the  reader  desires  it, 
two  volumes  are  given  out  as  one;  but  the  stamps 
on  the  dating-slips  show  that  this  fact  counted  for 
little  in  the  present  instances. 

I  would  not  assume  that  the  inferences  in  the 
present  article  are  of  any  special  value.  The  sta 
tistical  facts  are  the  thing.  So  far  as  I  know,  no  one 
has  called  attention  to  them  before,  and  they  are  cer 
tainly  worthy  of  all  interest  and  attention. 


WHAT   MAKES   PEOPLE   READ? 

Does  the  reading  public  read  because  it  has  a 
literary  taste  or  for  some  other  reason?  In  the  case 
of  the  public  library,  for  instance,  does  a  man  start 
with  an  overwhelming  desire  to  read  or  study  books 
and  is  he  impelled  thereby  to  seek  out  the  place 
where  he  may  most  easily  and  best  obtain  them?  Or 
is  he  primarily  attracted  to  the  library  by  some 
other  consideration,  his  love  for  books  and  reading 
acting  only  in  a  secondary  manner?  The  New  York 
Public  Library,  for  instance,  carries  on  the  registry 
books  of  its  circulating  department  nearly  400,000 
names,  and  in  the  course  of  a  year  nearly  35,000  new 
applications  are  made  for  the  use  of  its  branch  li 
braries,  scattered  over  different  parts  of  the  city. 
What  brings  these  people  to  the  library?  This  is  no 
idle  question.  The  number  of  library  users,  large  as 
it  is,  represents  too  small  a  fraction  of  our  popula 
tion.  If  it  is  a  good  thing  to  provide  free  reading 
matter  for  our  people — and  every  large  city  in  the 
country  has  committed  itself  to  the  truth  of  this 
proposition — we  should  certainly  try  to  see  that 
what  we  furnish  is  used  by  all  wTho  need  it.  Hence 
an  examination  into  the  motives  that  induce  people 
to  make  their  first  use  of  a  free  public  library  may 
bring  out  information  that  is  not  only  interesting 
but  useful.  To  this  end  several  hundred  regular 
users  of  the  branches  of  the  New  York  Public  Libra 
ry  were  recently  asked  this  question  directly,  and  the 
answers  are  tabulated  and  discussed  below.  In  each 
of  sixteen  branch  libraries  the  persons  interrogated 
numbered  forty — ten  each  of  men,  women,  boys  and 


12  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

girls.  Thirty  answers  have  been  thrown  out  for  ir 
relevancy  or  defectiveness.  The  others  are  classi 
fied  in  the  following  table: 


*.*H  * 

"o  2    "o  S    <u  -, 


in      £          rn         tfiU  ~      ia  V 

<  *g  I    £    s-a  ?  *s 

j  ° 

2    o 


o    g  «  5     w       ^  § 

^        ^  rrt  h*"  ^  fe    ^*  «JQ  ~ 


C/2          C/3          OT         C/2         C/}J     H 

6    64  10 37  20  3  i  9  4  154 

Boys    38    63  28  ..       4      3  9  6  5  . .  . .  3  159 

Women    12    67  14  4     ..      . .  20  21  2  I  2  5  148 

Girls     33    69  34 5  3  3  ••  ••  2  149 

Total     ...  89263  86  4      4      3  71  50  13  2  11  14  610 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  vast  majority  of  those 
questioned  were  led  to  the  library  by  some  circum 
stance  other  than  the  simple  desire  to  find  a  place 
where  books  could  be  obtained.  Of  more  than  six 
hundred  persons  whose  answers  are  here  recorded 
only  fourteen  found  the  library  as  the  result  of  a  di 
rect  search  for  it  prompted  by  a  desire  to  read.  In  a 
majority  of  the  other  cases,  of  course,  perhaps  in  all 
of  them,  the  desire  to  read  had  its  part,  but  this  de 
sire  was  awakened  by  hearing  a  mention  of  the  li 
brary  or  by  seeing  it  or  something  connected  with  it. 
These  determining  circumstances  fall  into  two 
classes,  those  that  worked  through  the  ear  and  those 
that  operated  through  the  eye. 

Those  who  heard  of  the  library  in  some  way  num 
bered  449,  while  those  who  saw  it  or  something  con 
nected  with  it  were  only  147 — an  interesting  fact,  es 
pecially  as  we  are  told  by  psychologists  that  appre 
hension  and  memory  through  sight  are  of  a  higher 
type  than  the  same  functions  where  exercised 
through  hearing.  Probably,  however,  this  differ 
ence  was  dependent  on  the  fact  that  the  thing  heard 


WHY    PEOPLE    READ  13 

was  in  most  cases  a  direct  injunction  or  a  piece  of 
advice,  while  the  thing  seen  did  not  act  with  sim 
ilar  urgency.  There  are  some  surprises  in  the  table. 
For  instance,  only  four  persons  were  sent  directly  to 
libraries  by  persons  employed  therein.  Doubtless 
the  average  library  assistant  wishes  to  get  as  far 
from  "shop"  as  possible  in  her  leisure  hours,  but  it 
is  still  disappointing  to  find  that  those  who  are  em 
ployed  in  our  libraries  exercise  so  little  influence  in 
bringing  persons  to  use  them.  The  same  thing  is 
true  of  the  influence  of  reading  rooms.  In  many  of 
the  branch  libraries  in  New  York  there  are  separate 
reading  rooms  to  which  others  than  card-holders  in 
the  library  are  admitted,  and  one  of  the  chief  argu 
ments  for  this  has  been  that  the  user  of  such  a  room, 
having  become  accustomed  to  resort  to  the  library 
building,  would  be  apt  to  use  the  books.  Apparently, 
however,  such  persons  are  in  the  minority.  No  less 
disappointing  is  the  slight  influence  of  the  clergy. 
Only  four  persons  report  this  as  a  determining  influ 
ence  and  these  were  all  women  connected  with  a 
branch  which  was  formerly  the  parish  library  of  a 
New  York  church. 

The  influence  of  the  press,  too,  seems  to  amount 
to  little,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  newspapers  in 
New  York  have  freely  commented  on  the  valuable 
work  of  the  branch  libraries  and  have  called  attention 
to  it  both  in  the  news  and  editorial  columns  whenever 
occasion  offered.  Do  the  readers  of  library  books  in 
New  York  shun  the  public  press,  or  do  they  pay 
scant  heed  to  what  they  read  therein? 

Another  somewhat  noteworthy  fact  is  that  of  the 
449  persons  who  sought  the  library  by  advice  of  some 
one,  only  89  were  sent  by  teachers.  But  perhaps  this 
is  unfair.  Of  265  boys  and  girls  who  thus  came  to 


14  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

the  library,  only  71  were  sent  by  teachers.  This  is 
a  larger  percentage,  but  it  is  still  not  so  large  as  we 
might  expect. 

The  difference  between  adults  and  children  comes 
out  quite  strikingly  in  a  few  instances.  We  should 
have  foreseen  this  of  course  in  the  case  of  advice  by 
teachers,  which  was  reported  by  71  children  and 
only  18  adults  as  a  reason  for  visiting  the  library. 
Here  we  should  not  have  expected  this  reason  to  be 
given  by  adults  at  all.  Doubtless  these  were  chiefly 
young  men  and  women  who  had  used  the  library 
since  their  school-days.  In  like  manner  the  advice 
or  injunction  of  relatives  was  more  patent  with  chil 
dren  than  with  adults,  the  proportion  here  being  62 
to  24.  This  probably  illustrates  the  power  of  parent 
al  injunction.  In  another  case  the  difference  comes 
out  in  a  wholly  unexpected  way.  Of  the  71  persons 
who  reported  that  they  were  attracted  to  the  library 
by  seeing  the  buildings,  57  were  adults  and  only  14 
children.  The  same  is  true  of  those  who  were  led  in 
by  seeing  a  sign,  who  numbered  41  adults  to  only  9 
children.  This  seems  to  show  either  that  adults  are 
more  observant  or  that  children  are  more  diffident 
in  following  out  an  impulse  of  this  kind.  It  com 
pletely  negatives  the  ordinary  impression  among  li 
brarians,  at  least  in  New  York,  where  it  has  been 
believed  that  the  sight  of  a  library  building,  espe 
cially  where  the  work  going  on  inside  is  visible  from 
the  street,  is  a  potent  attraction  to  the  young.  Some 
of  the  new  branch  buildings  in  New  York  have  even 
been  planned  with  a  special  view  to  the  exercise  of 
this  kind  of  attraction. 

The  small  number  of  persons  who  were  attract 
ed  by  printed  matter,  in  library  or  general  publica 
tions,  were  entirely  adults.  The  one  instance  where 
age  seems  to  exercise  no  particular  influence  is  that 


WHY    PEOPLE    HEAD  15 

of  the  advice  of  friends,  by  which  old  and  young 
alike  seem  to  have  profited. 

The  influence  of  sex  does  not  appear  clearly,  al 
though  among  those  who  followed  the  injunction  of 
relatives  the  women  and  girls  are  slightly  in  the  ma 
jority,  and  the  four  who  w^ere  sent  by  clergymen  were 
all  women.  Of  those  who  were  attracted  by  the 
buildings  46  were  male  and  25  female,  which  may 
mean  that  men  are  somewhat  more  observant  or  less 
diffident  than  women. 

A  few  of  those  questioned  relate  their  experiences 
at  some  length.  Says  one  boy :  "A  boy  friend  of  mine 
said  he  belonged  to  this  library  and  he  found  some 
very  good  books  here.  He  asked  me  if  I  wanted  to 
join;  I  said  yes.  He  told  me  I  would  have  to  get  a 
reference.  I  got  one,  and  joined  this  library."  An 
other  one  reports :  "I  saw  a  boy  in  the  street  and 
asked  him  where  he  wras  going.  He  said  he  was  go 
ing  to  the  library.  I  asked  him  what  the  library  was 
and  he  told  me;  so  I  came  up  here  and  have  been 
coming  ever  since." 

Critical  judgment  is  shown  by  some  of  the  young 
people.  One  boy  says:  "I  heard  all  the  other  boys 
saying  it  was  a  good  library  and  that  the  books  were 
better  kept  than  in  a  majority  of  libraries."  A  girl 
says  that  friends  "told  her  what  nice  books  wrere  in 
this  library."  In  one  case  a  boy's  brother  "told  him 
he  could  get  the  best  books  here  for  his  needs." 

The  combination  of  man  and  book  seems  to  be 
very  attractive.  One  child  "saw  a  boy  in  school  with 
a  book,  telling  wrhat  a  boy  should  know  about  elec 
tricity;  I  wanted  to  read  that  book  and  joined  the 
library."  Others  "followed  a  crowd  of  little  boys 
with  books";  "saw  children  taking  books  out  of  the 
building  and  asked  them  about  joining" ;  "saw  a  boy 
carrying  books  and  asked  if  there  was  a  library  in 


16  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

the  neighborhood/'  A  woman  "saw  a  child  with  a 
library  book  in  the  park  and  asked  her  for  the  ad 
dress  of  the  library."  Sometimes  the  book  alone 
does  the  work,  as  shown  by  the  following  laconic 
report:  "Found  a  book  in  the  park;  took  it  to  the  li 
brary;  joined  it."  A  cause  of  sorrow  to  many  libra 
rians  who  have  decided  ideas  regarding  literature 
for  children  will  be  the  report  of  a  boy  who  ex 
claimed  :  "Horatio  Alger  did  it !"  On  being  asked  to 
explain,  he  said  that  a  friend  had  brought  one  of  Al 
ger' s  books  to  his  house  and  that  he  was  thereby  at 
tracted  to  the  library. 

Among  those  who  were  brought  in  by  relatives 
are  children  who  were  first  carried  by  their  mothers 
to  the  library  as  infants  and  so  grew  naturally  into 
its  use.  Sometimes  the  influence  works  upward  in 
stead  of  downward,  for  several  adults  report  that 
their  children  brought  them  to  the  library  or  induced 
them  to  visit  it.  One  man  reports  that  he  "got  mar 
ried  and  his  wife  induced  him  to  come." 

Some  of  the  reasons  given  are  curious.  A  few 
are  unconnected  with  the  use  of  books.  One  girl 
came  to  the  library  because  "it  was  a  very  handy  li 
brary"  ;  another,  because  she  "saw  it  was  a  nice  place 
to  come  to  on  a  rainy  day/'  Still  another  frankly 
avows  that  "it  was  the  fad  among  the  boys  and  girls 
of  our  neighborhood;  we  used  to  meet  at  the  library." 
A  postman  reported  that  he  entered  the  library  first 
in  the  line  of  his  duty,  but  was  attracted  by  it  and 
began  to  take  out  books.  A  clergyman  had  his  atten 
tion  called  to  the  library  by  requests  from  choir-boys 
that  he  should  sign  their  application  blanks;  after 
wards  thinking  that  he  might  find  books  there  for 
his  own  reading,  he  became  a  regular  user.  One 
user  came  first  to  the  library  to  see  an  exhibition  of 
pictures  of  old  New  York.  A  recent  importation 


WHY    PEOPLE    BEAD  17 

says :  "When  I  came  from  Paris  I  found  all  my  cous 
ins  speaking  English;  'well,'  they  said,  4go  to  the  li 
brary  and  take  books'  '  — a  process  that  doubtless 
did  its  share  toward  making  an  American  of  the  new 
arrival.  In  another  case,  the  Americanizing  proc 
ess  has  not  yet  reached  the  stage  where  the  user's 
English  is  altogether  intelligible.  He  says:  "Be 
cause  I  like  to  read  the  book.  I  ask  the  bakery  lady 
to  my  reference  and  I  sing  my  neam"  [sign  my 
name?], 

Here  are  some  examples  of  recently  acquired  ele 
gance  in  diction  that  are  almost  baboo-like  in  their 
hopelessness:  "Because  it  interest  about  the  coun 
tries  that  are  far  away.  It  gives  knowledge  to  many 
of  the  people  in  this  country."  "So  as  to  obtain 
knowledge  from  them  and  by  reading  books  find  out 
how  the  great  men  were  in  their  former  days  and 
all  about  them  and  the  world  and  its  people."  It 
will  be  seen  that  the  last  two  writers  were  among 
those  who  misunderstood  our  questions  and  told 
why  they  read  books  rather  than  how  they  were  first 
led  to  the  use  of  a  library. 

These  reports  are  far  from  possessing  merely  a 
passing  interest  for  the  curious.  For  the  public  li 
brarian,  whose  wish  it  is  to  reach  as  large  a  propor 
tion  of  the  public  as  possible,  they  are  full  of  valu 
able  hints.  They  emphasize,  for  instance,  the  urgent 
necessity  of  winning  the  good  will  of  the  public,  and 
they  forcibly  remind  us  that  this  is  of  more  value  in 
gaining  a  foothold  for  the  library  than  columns  of 
notices  in  the  papers  or  thousands  of  circulars  or 
cards  distributed  in  the  neighborhood.  It  is  even 
more  potent  than  a  beautiful  building.  Attractive 
as  this  is,  its  value  as  an  influence  to  secure  new 
readers  is  vastly  less  than  a  reputation  for  hospital 
ity  and  helpfulness. 


18  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

In  looking  over  the  figures  one  rather  disquieting 
thought  cannot  be  kept  down.  If  the  good  will  of 
the  public  is  so  potent  in  increasing  the  use  of  the  li 
brary,  the  ill  will  of  the  same  public  must  be  equally 
potent  in  the  opposite  direction.  Some  of  those  who 
are  satisfied  with  us  and  our  work  are  here  put  on 
record.  How  about  the  dissatisfied?  A  record  of 
these  might  be  even  more  interesting,  for  it  would 
point  out  weaknesses  to  be  strengthened  and  errors 
to  be  avoided — but  that,  as  Kipling  says,  "is  another 
story." 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  POSSESSIVE:  A 
STUDY   OF   BOOK-TITLES 

If  there  is  one  particular  advantage  possessed 
by  the  Teutonic  over  the  Romance  languages  in  idio 
matic  clearness  and  precision  it  is  that  conferred  by 
their  ownership  of  a  possessive  case,  almost  the  sole 
remaining  monument  to  the  fact  that  our  ancestors 
spoke  an  inflected  tongue.  That  we  should  still  be 
able  to  speak  of  "the  baker's  wife's  dog"  instead  of 
"the  dog  of  the  wife  of  the  baker"  certainly  should 
be  regarded  by  English-speaking  people  as  a  precious 
birthright.  Yet,  there  are  increasing  evidences  of  a 
tendency  to  discard  this  only  remaining  case-ending 
and  to  replace  its  powerful  backbone  with  the  com 
paratively  limp  and  cartilaginous  preposition.  This 
tendency  has  not  yet  appeared  so  much  in  our  spoken 
as  in  our  written  language,  and  even  here  only  in 
the  most  formal  parts  of  it.  It  is  especially  notice 
able  in  the  diction  of  the  purely  formal  title  and 
heading. 

That  the  reader  may  have  something  beyond  an 
unsupported  assertion  that  this  is  the  case,  I  purpose 
to  offer  in  evidence  the  titles  of  some  recent  works 
of  fiction,  and  to  make  a  brief  statistical  study  of 
them. 

The  titles  were  taken  from  the  adult  fiction  lists 
in  the  Monthly  Bulletins  of  the  New  York  Free  Cir 
culating  Library  from  November,  1895,  to  March, 
1897,  inclusive,  and  are  all  such  titles  as  contain  a 
possessive,  whether  expressed  by  the  possessive  case 
or  by  the  preposition  "of"  with  the  objective.  Some 
titles  are  included  in  which  the  grammatical  relation 
is  slightly  different,  but  all  admit  the  alternative  of 


20  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

the  case-ending  "V  or  "of"  followed  by  the  objec 
tive  case. 

Of  the  101  titles  thus  selected,  41  use  the  posses 
sive  case  and  60  the  objective  with  the  preposition. 
This  proportion  is  in  itself  sufficiently  suggestive, 
but  it  becomes  still  more  so  by  comparing  it  with  the 
corresponding  proportion  among  a  different  set  of 
titles.  For  this  purpose  101  fiction  titles  were  se 
lected,  just  as  they  appeared  in  alphabetical  order, 
from  a  library  catalogue  bearing  the  date  1889 ;  only 
those  being  taken,  as  before,  that  contain  a  posses 
sive.  Of  these  101,  71  use  the  possessive  case  and  30 
the  objective  with  "of."  In  other  words,  where  eight 
years  ago  nearly  three-quarters  of  such  titles  used 
the  possessive  case,  now  only  two-fifths  use  it,  a  pro 
portionate  reduction  of  nearly  one-half. 

The  change  appears  still  more  striking  when  we 
study  the  titles  a  little  more  closely.  Of  those  in 
the  earlier  series  there  is  not  one  that  is  not  good, 
idiomatic  English  as  it  stands,  whichever  form  is 
used;  we  may  even  say  that  there  is  not  one  that 
would  not  be  made  less  idiomatic  by  a  change  to  the 
alternative  form.  Among  the  recent  titles,  however, 
while  the  forms  using  the  possessive  case  are  all  bet 
ter  as  they  are,  of  the  60  titles  that  use  the  objective 
with  "of"  only  22  would  be  injured  by  a  change,  and 
the  reason  why  8  of  these  are  better  as  they  are  is 
simply  that  change  would  destroy  euphony.  Among 
these  eight  are 

"The  Indiscretion  of  the  Duchess," 
"The  Flight  of  a  Shadow," 
"The  Secret  of  Narcisse,"  etc., 

where  the  more  idiomatic  forms, 

"The  Duchess's  Indiscretion," 

"Narcisse's  Secret," 

"A  Shadow's  Flight,"  etc., 

are  certainly  not  euphonic. 


THE    POSSESSIVE  21 

Of  the  others,  8  would  not  be  injured  by  a  change, 
and  no  less  than  30  would  be  improved  from  the 
standpoint  of  idiomatic  English.  It  may  be  well  to 
quote  these  thirty  titles.  They  are : 

"The  Shadow  of  Hilton  Fernbrook," 

"The  Statement  of  Stella  Maberly," 

"The  Shadow  of  John  Wallace," 

"The  Banishment  of  Jessop  Blythe," 

"The  Desire  of  the  Moth," 

"The  Island  of  Dr.  Moreau," 

"The  Damnation  of  Theron  Ware," 

"The  Courtship  of  Morrice  Buckler," 

"The  Daughter  of  a  Stoic," 

"The  Lament  of  Dives," 

"The  Heart  of  Princess  Osra," 

"The  Death  of  the  Lion," 

"The  Vengeance  of  James  Vansittart," 

"The  Wife  of  a  Vain  Man," 

"The  Crime  of  Henry  Vane," 

"The  Son  of  Old  Harry," 

"The  Honour  of  Savelli," 

"The  Life  of  Nancy," 

"The  Story  of  Lawrence  Garthe," 

"The  Marriage  of  Esther," 

"The  House  of  Martha," 

"Tales  of  an  Engineer," 

"Love-letters  of  a  Worldly  Woman," 

"The  Way  of  a  Maid," 

"The  Soul  of  Pierre," 

"The  Day  of  Their  Wedding," 

"The  Exploits  of  Brigadier  Gerard," 

"The  Hand  of  Ethelberta," 

"The  Failure  of  Sibyl  Fletcher," 

"The  Love-affairs  of  an  Old  Maid," 

Of  course,  in  such  a  division  as  this,  much  must 
depend  on  individual  judgment  and  bias.  Probably 
no  two  persons  would  divide  the  list  in  just  the  same 
way,  but  it  is  my  belief  that  the  general  result  in 
each  case  would  be  much  the  same.  To  me  the  pos- 


22  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

sessive  in  every  one  of  the  above-quoted  titles  would 
have  been  more  idiomatic,  thus: 

"Hilton   Fcrnbrook's  Shadow," 
"Stella   Maberly's   Statement," 
"John  Wallace's  Shadow," 
"Morrice  Buckler's  Courtship," 
"A  Stoic's  Daughter," 
"Henry  Vane's  Crime,"  etc.,  etc. 

In  one  case,  at  least,  this  fact  has  been  recog 
nized  by  a  publisher,  for  "The  Vengeance  of  James 
Vansittart,"  whose  title  is  included  in  the  list  given 
above,  has  appeared  in  a  later  edition  as  "James  Van- 
sittart's  Vengeance" — a  palpable  improvement. 

I  shall  not  discuss  the  cause  of  this  change  in  the 
use  of  the  possessive,  though  it  seems  to  me  an  evi 
dent  Gallicism,  nor  shall  I  open  the  question  of 
whether  it  is  a  mere  passing  fad  or  the  beginning  of 
an  actual  alteration  in  the  language.  However  this 
may  be,  it  seems  undeniable  that  there  is  an  actual 
and  considerable  difference  in  the  use  of  the  posses 
sive  to-day  and  its  use  ten  years  ago,  at  least  in 
formal  titles  and  headings.  I  have  confined  myself 
to  book-titles,  because  that  is  the  department  where 
the  tendency  presents  itself  to  me  most  clearly;  but 
it  may  be  seen  on  street  signs,  in  advertisements,  and 
in  newspaper  headings.  It  is  not  to  be  found  yet  in 
the  spoken  language,  at  least  it  is  not  noticeable 
there,  but  it  would  be  decidedly  unsafe  to  prophesy 
that  it  will  never  appear  there.  Ten  years  from  now 
we  may  hear  about  "the  breaking  of  the  arm  of  John 
Smith"  and  "the  hat  of  Tom,"  without  a  thought 
that  these  phrases  have  not  been  part  of  our  idio 
matic  speech  since  Shakespeare's  time. 


SELECTIVE  EDUCATION* 

Since  Darwin  called  attention  to  the  role  of  what 
he  named  "natural  selection"  in  the  genesis  and  pre 
servation  of  species,  and  since  his  successors,  both 
followers  and  opponents,  have  added  to  this  many 
other  kinds  of  selection  that  are  continually  opera 
tive,  it  has  become  increasingly  evident  that  from 
one  standpoint  we  may  look  on  the  sum  of  natural 
processes,  organic  and  inorganic,  as  a  vast  selective 
system,  as  the  result  of  which  things  are  as  they  are, 
whether  the  results  are  the  positions  of  celestial 
bodies  or  the  relative  places  of  human  beings  in  the 
intellectual  or  social  scale.  The  exact  constitution 
of  the  present  population  of  New  York  is  the  result 
of  a  great  number  of  selective  acts,  some  regular, 
others  more  or  less  haphazard.  Selection  is  no  less 
selection  because  it  occurs  by  what  we  call  chance— 
for  chance  is  only  our  name  for  the  totality  of  trivial 
and  unconsidered  causes.  When,  however,  we  count 
man  and  man's  efforts  in  the  sum  of  natural  objects 
and  forces,  we  have  to  reckon  with  his  intelligence  in 
these  selective  processes.  I  desire  to  call  attention 
to  the  place  that  they  play  in  educative  systems  and 
in  particular  to  the  way  in  which  they  may  be  fur 
thered  or  made  more  effective  by  books,  especially 
by  public  collections  of  books. 

When  we  think  of  any  kind  of  training  as  it  af 
fects  the  individual,  we  most  naturally  regard  it  as 
changing  that  individual,  as  making  him  more  fit, 
either  for  life  in  general  or  for  some  special  form 
of  life's  activities.  But  when  we  think  of  it  as  af- 

*  Read   before   the   Schoolmen   of  New  York. 


24  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

fecting  a  whole  community  or  a  whole  nation,  we 
may  regard  it  as  essentially  a  selective  process.  In 
a  given  community  it  is  not  only  desirable  that  a  cer 
tain  number  of  men  should  be  trained  to  do  a  speci 
fied  kind  of  work,  but  it  is  even  more  desirable  that 
these  should  be  the  men  that  are  best  fitted  to  do  this 
work.  When  Mr.  Luther  Burbank  brings  into  play 
the  selection  by  means  of  which  he  achieves  Ids  re 
markable  results  in  plant  breeding  he  gets  rid  of  the 
unfit  by  destruction,  and  as  all  are  unfit  for  the  mo 
ment  that  do  not  advance  the  special  end  that  lie 
has  in  view,  he  burns  up  plants — new  and  interest 
ing  varieties  perhaps — by  the  hundred  thousand. 
We  cannot  destroy  the  unfit,  nor  do  we  desire  to  do 
so,  for  from  the  educational  point  of  view  unfitness 
is  merely  bad  adjustment.  There  is  a  place  for  every 
man  in  the  world  and  it  is  the  educator's  business 
to  see  that  he  reaches  it,  if  not  by  formative,  then  by 
selective  processes.  This  selection  is  badly  made  in 
our  present  state  of  civilization.  It  depends  to  a 
lai-ge  extent  upon  circumstances  remote  from  the 
training  itself — upon  caprice,  either  that  of  the  per 
son  to  be  trained  or  of  his  parents,  upon  accidents 
of  birth  or  situation,  upon  a  thousand  irrelevant 
things:  but  in  every  case  there  are  elements  present 
in  the  training  itself  that  aid  in  determining  it.  A 
young  man  begins  to  study  medicine,  and  he  finds 
that  his  physical  repulsion  for  work  in  the  dissect 
ing-room  can  not  be  overcome.  He  abandons  the 
study  and  by  doing  so  eliminates  an  unfit  person.  A 
boy  who  has  no  head  for  figures  enters  a  business 
college.  He  can  not  get  his  diploma,  and  the  com 
munity  is  spared  one  bad  bookkeeper.  Certainly  in 
some  instances,  possibly  in  all,  technical  and  pro 
fessional  schools  that  are  noted  for  the  excellence  of 
their  product  are  superior  not  so  much  because  they 


SELECTIVE    EDUCATION  25 

have  better  methods  of  training,  but  because  their 
material  is  of  better  quality,  owing  to  selection  ex 
ercised  either  purposely,  or  automatically,  or  per 
haps  by  some  chance.  The  same  is  true  of  colleges. 
Of  two  institutions  with  the  same  curriculum  and 
equally  able  instructors,  the  one  with  the  widest  rep 
utation  will  turn  out  the  best  graduates  because  it 
attracts  abler  men  from  a  wider  field.  This  is  true 
even  in  such  a  department  as  athletics.  To  him  that 
hath  shall  be  given.  This  is  purely  an  automatic  se 
lective  effect. 

It  would  appear  desirable  to  dwell  more  upon  se 
lective  features  in  educational  training,  to  ascertain 
what  they  are  in  each  case  and  how  they  work,  and 
to  control  and  dispose  them  with  more  systematic 
care.  Different  minds  will  always  attach  different 
degrees  of  importance  to  natural  and  acquired  fit 
ness,  but  probably  all  will  agree  that  training  be 
stowed  upon  the  absolutely  unfit  is  worse  than  use 
less,  and  that  there  are  persons  whose  natural  apti 
tudes  are  so  great  that  upon  them  a  minimum  of 
training  will  produce  a  maximum  effect.  Such  se 
lective  features  as  our  present  educational  processes 
possess,  the  examination,  for  instance,  are  mostly  ex 
clusive;  they  aim  to  bar  out  the  unfit  rather  than 
to  attract  the  fit.  Here  is  a  feature  on  which  some 
attention  may  well  be  fixt. 

How  do  these  considerations  affect  the  subject 
of  general  education?  Are  we  to  affirm  that  arith 
metic  is  only  for  the  born  mathematician  and  Latin 
for  the  born  linguist,  and  endeavor  to  ascertain  who 
these  may  be?  Not  so;  for  here  we  are  training  not 
experts  but  citizens.  Discrimination  here  must  be 
not  in  the  quality  but  in  the  quantity  of  training. 
We  may  divide  the  members  of  any  community  into 
classes  according  as  their  formal  education — their 


26  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

school  and  college  training — has  lasted  one,  two, 
three,  four,  or  more  years.  There  has  been  a  selec 
tion  here,  but  it  has  operated,  in  general,  even  more 
imperfectly  than  in  the  case  of  special  training. 
Persons  who  are  mentally  qualified  to  continue  their 
schooling  to  the  end  of  a  college  course,  and  who  by 
so  doing  would  become  more  useful  members  of  the 
community,  are  obliged  to  be  content  with  two  or 
three  years  in  the  lower  grades,  while  others,  who 
are  unfitted  for  the  university,  are  kept  at  it  until 
they  take,  or  fail  to  take,  the  bachelor's  degree.  An 
ideal  state  of  tilings,  of  course,  would  be  to  give  each 
person  the  amount  of  general  education  for  which 
he  is  fitted  and  then  stop.  This  would  be  difficult 
of  realization  even  if  financial  considerations  did  not 
so  often  interfere.  But  at  least  we  may  keep  in  view 
the  desirability  of  preventing  too  many  misfits  and 
of  insisting,  so  far  as  possible,  on  any  selective  fea 
tures  that  we  may  discover  in  present  systems. 

For  instance,  a  powerful  selective  feature  is  the 
attractiveness  of  a  given  course  of  study  to  those  who 
are  desired  to  pursue  it.  If  we  can  find  a  way,  for 
example,  to  make  our  high  school  courses  attractive 
to  those  who  are  qualified  to  take  them,  while  at  the 
same  time  rendering  them  very  distasteful  to  those 
who  are  not  so  qualified,  we  shall  evidently  have 
taken  a  step  in  the  right  direction.  It  is  clear  that 
both  parts  of  this  prescription  must  be  taken  to 
gether  or  there  is  no  true  selection.  Much  has  been 
done  of  late  years  toward  making  educational 
courses  of  all  kinds  interesting  and  attractive,  but 
it  is  to  be  feared  that  their  attractiveness  has  been 
such  as  to  appeal  to  the  unfit  as  well  as  to  the  fit.  If 
we  sugar-coat  our  pills  indiscriminately  and  mix 
them  with  candy,  many  wrill  partake  who  need  an 
other  kind  of  medicine  altogether.  We  must  so  ar- 


SELECTIVE    EDUCATION  27 

range  things  that  the  fit  will  like  while  the  unfit  dis 
like,  and  for  this  purpose  the  less  sugar-coating  the 
better.  This  is  no  easy  problem  and  it  is  intended 
merely  to  indicate  it  here,  not  to  propose  a  general 
solution. 

The  one  thing  to  which  attention  should  be  di 
rected  is  the  role  that  may  be  and  is  played  by  the 
printed  book  in  selective  education.  There  is  more 
or  less  effort  to  discredit  books  as  educative  tools 
and  to  lay  emphasis  on  oral  instruction  and  manual 
training.  We  need  not  decry  these,  but,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  after  all  the  book  contains  the 
record  of  man's  progress;  we  may  tell  how  to  do  a 
thing,  and  show  how  to  do  it,  but  we  shall  never  do 
it  in  a  better  way  or  explain  the  why  and  wherefore, 
and  surely  transmit  that  ability  and  that  explana 
tion  to  posterity,  without  the  aid  of  a  stable  record  of 
some  kind.  If  we  are  sure  that  our  students  could 
and  would  pick  out  only  what  they  needed,  as  a  wild 
animal  picks  his  food  in  the  woods,  we  might  go  far 
toward  solving  our  problem,  by  simply  turning  them 
loose  in  a  collection  of  books.  Some  people  have 
minds  that  qualify  them  to  profit  by  such  "brows 
ing,"  and  some  of  these  have  practically  educated 
themselves  in  a  library.  Even  in  the  more  common 
cases  where  formal  training  is  absolutely  necessary, 
access  to  other  books  than  text-books  is  an  aid  to  se 
lection  both  qualitative  and  quantitative.  Books 
may  serve  as  samples.  To  take  an  extreme  case,  a 
boy  who  had  no  knowledge  whatever  of  the  nature  of 
law  or  medicine  would  certainly  not  be  competent  to 
choose  between  them  in  selecting  a  profession,  and 
a  month  spent  in  a  library  where  there  were  books 
on  both  subjects  would  certainly  operate  to  lessen  his 
incompetence.  Probably  it  would  not  be  rash  to  as 
sert  that  with  free  access  to  books,  under  proper 


28  LIBEAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

guidance,  both  before  and  during  a  course  of  train 
ing,  the  persons  who  begin  that  course  will  in 
clude  more  of  the  fit  and  those  who  finish  it  will  in 
clude  less  of  the  unfit,  than  without  such  access. 

Let  us  consider  one  or  two  concrete  examples. 
A  college  boy  has  the  choice  of  several  different 
courses.  He  knows  little  of  them,  but  thinks  that 
one  will  meet  his  needs.  He  elects  it  and  finds  too 
late  that  he  is  wasting  his  time.  Another  boy,  whose 
general  reading  has  been  sufficient  to  give  him  some 
superficial  knowledge  of  the  subject-matter  in  all  the 
courses,  sees  clearly  which  Avill  benefit  him,  and  prof 
its  by  that  knowledge. 

Again,  a  boy,  full  of  the  possibilities  that  would 
lead  him  to  appreciate  the  best  in  literature,  has 
gained  his  knowledge  of  it  from  a  teacher  who  looks 
upon  a  literary  masterpiece  only  as  something  to  be 
dissected.  The  student  has  been  disgusted  instead 
of  inspired,  and  his  whole  life  lias  been  deprived  of 
one  of  the  purest  and  most  uplifting  of  all  influences. 
Had  he  been  brought  up  in  a  library  where  he  could 
make  literary  friends  and  develop  literary  enthusi 
asms,  his  course  with  the  dryasdust  teacher  would 
have  been  only  an  unpleasant  incident,  instead  of  the 
wrecking  of  a  part  of  his  intellectual  life. 

Still  again,  a  boy  on  a  farm  has  vague  aspira 
tions.  He  knows  that  he  wants  a  broader  horizon, 
to  get  away  from  his  cramped  environment — that  is 
about  all.  How  many  boys,  impelled  by  such  feel 
ings,  have  gone  out  into  the  world  with  no  clear  idea 
of  what  they  are  fitted  to  do,  or  even  what  they  real 
ly  desire!  To  how  many  others  has  the  companion 
ship  of  a  few  books  meant  the  opening  of  a  peep 
hole,  thru  which,  dimly  perhaps,  but  none1  the  less 
really,  have  been  descried  definite  possibilities,  needs, 
arid  opportunities ! 

To  all  of  these  vouths  books  have  been  selective 


SELECTIVE    EDUCATION  29 

aids  merely— they  have  added  little  or  nothing  to  the 
actual  training  whose  extent  and  character  they  have 
served  to  point  out.  Such  cases,  which  it  would  be 
easy  to  multiply,  illustrate  the  value  of  books  in  the 
selective  functions  of  training.  To  assert  that  they 
exercise  such  a  function  is  only  another  way  of  say 
ing  that  a  mind  orients  itself  by  the  widest  contact 
with  other  minds.  There  are  other  ways  of  assur 
ing  this  contact,  and  these  should  not  be  neglected; 
but  only  thru  books  can  it  approach  universality 
both  in  space  and  in  time.  How  else  could  we  know 
exactly  what  Homer  and  St.  Augustine  and  Descart 
es  thought  and  what  Tolstoi  and  Lord  Kelvin  and 
William  James,  we  will  say,  are  even'now  thinking? 

It  has  scarcely  been  necessary  to  say  all  this  to 
convince  you  of  the  value  of  books  as  aids  to  educa 
tion  ;  but  it  is  certainly  interesting  to  find  that  in  an 
examination  of  the  selective  processes  in  education, 
we  meet  with  our  old  friends  in  such  an  important 
role. 

A  general  collection  of  books,  then,  constitutes 
an  important  factor  in  the  selective  part  of  an  edu 
cation.  Where  shall  we  place  this  collection?  I  ven 
ture  to  say  that  altho  every  school  must  have  a  libra 
ry  to  aid  in  the  formative  part  of  its  training,  the  li 
brary  as  a  selective  aid  should  be  large  and  central 
and  should  preferably  be  at  the  disposal  of  the  stu 
dent  not  only  during  the  period  of  his  formal  train 
ing,  but  before  and  after  it.  This  points  to  the  pub 
lic  library,  and  to  close  cooperation  between  it  and 
the  school,  rather  than  to  the  expansion  of  the  class 
room-library.  This  is,  perhaps,  not  the  place  to  dis 
pute  the  wisdom  of  our  Board  of  Education  in  devel 
oping  classroom  libraries,  but  it  may  be  proper  to 
put  in  a  plea  for  confining  them  to  books  that  bear 
more  particularly  on  the  subjects  of  instruction. 
The  general  collection  of  books  should  be  outside  of 


30  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

the  school,  because  the  boy  is  destined  to  spend  most 
of  his  life  outside  of  the  school.  His  education  by 
no  means  ends  with  his  graduation.  The  agents  that 
operate  to  develop  and  change  him  will  be  at  work 
so  long  as  he  lives,  and  it  is  desirable  that  the  book 
should  be  one  of  these.  If  he  says  good-by  to  the 
book  when  he  leaves  school,  that  part  of  his  training 
is  likely  to  be  at  an  end.  If  he  uses,  in  connection 
with,  and  parallel  to,  his  formal  education  a  general 
collection  of  books  outside  of  the  school,  he  will  con 
tinue  to  use  it  after  he  leaves  school.  And  even  so 
far  as  the  special  classroom  library  is  concerned,  it 
must  be  evident  that  a  large  general  collection  of 
books  that  may  be  drawn  upon  freely  is  a  useful  sup 
plement,  For  the  teacher's  professional  use,  the 
larger  the  collection  at  his  disposal  the  better.  A 
sum  of  money  spent  by  the  city  in  improving  and 
making  adequate  the  pedagogical  section  of  its  pub 
lic  library,  particularly  in  the  department  of  circu 
lation,  will  be  expended  to  greater  advantage  than 
many  times  the  amount  devoted  to  a  large  number  of 
small  collections  on  the  same  subjects  in  schools. 

These  are  the  considerations  that  have  governed 
the  New  York  Public  Library  in  its  effort  to  be  of 
assistance  to  the  teachers  and  pupils  in  the  public 
schools  of  the  city.  Stated  formally,  these  efforts 
manifest  themselves  in  the  following  directions : 

(1)  The  making  of  library  use  continuous  from 
the  earliest  possible  age,  thru  school  life  and  after 
wards  ; 

(2)  Cooperation  with  the  teacher  in  guiding  and 
limiting  the  child's  reading  during  the  school  period; 

(3)  Aid  within  the  library  in  the  preparation  of 
school  work; 

(4)  The  supplementing  of  classroom  libraries  by 
the  loan  of  books  in  quantity ; 


SELECTIVE    EDUCATION  31 

(5)  The  cultivation    of    personal    relations    be 
tween  library  assistants  and  teachers  in  their  im 
mediate  neighborhood; 

(6)  The  furnishing  of  accurate  and  up-to-date  in 
formation   to    schools    regarding    the    library's    re 
sources  and  its  willingness    to    place    them    at    the 
school's  disposal; 

(7)  The  increase  of  the  library's  circulation  col 
lection  along  lines  suggested  and  desired  by  teachers ; 

(8)  The  granting  of  special  privileges  to  teach 
ers  and  special  students  who  use  the  library  for  pur 
poses  of  study. 

Toward  the  realization  of  these  aims  three  depart 
ments  are  now  cooperating,  each  of  them  in  charge 
of  an  expert  in  his  or  her  special  line  of  work. 

(1)  The  children's  rooms  in  the  various  libraries, 
now  under  the  direction  of  an  expert  supervisor. 

(2)  The  traveling  library  office. 

(3)  The  division  of  school  work,  with  an  assist 
ant  in  each  branch,  under  skilled  headquarters  su 
perintendence. 

When  our  plans,  which  are  already  in  good  work 
ing  order,  are  completely  carried  out,  we  shall  be 
able  to  guarantee  to  every  child  guidance  in  his  read 
ing  up  to  and  thru  his  school  course,  with  direction 
in  a  line  of  influence  that  will  make  him  a  user  of 
books  thruout  his  life  and  create  in  him  a  feeling  of 
attachment  to  the  public  library  as  the  home  and  dis 
penser  of  books  and  as  a  permanent  intellectual 
refuge  from  care,  trouble,  and  material  things  in  gen 
eral,  as  well  as  a  mine  of  information  on  all  subjects 
that  may  benefit  or  interest  him. 

Some  of  the  obstacles  to  the  immediate  realiza 
tion  of  our  plans  in  full  may  be  briefly  stated  as  fol 
lows: 

(1)  Lack  of  sufficient  funds.     With  more  money 


32  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

we  could  buy  more  books,  pay  higher  salaries,  and 
employ  more  persons.  The  assistants  in  charge  of 
children's  rooms  should  be  women  of  the  highest  cul 
ture  and  ability,  and  it  is  difficult  to  secure  proper 
persons  at  our  present  salaries.  Assistants  in  charge 
of  school  work  must  be  persons  of  tact  and  quick 
ness  of  perception,  and  they  should  have  no  other 
work  to  do;  whereas  at  present  we  are  obliged  to 
give  this  work  to  library  assistants  in  addition  to 
their  ordinary  routine  duties,  to  avoid  increasing 
our  staff  by  about  forty  assistants,  which  our  appro 
priation  does  not  permit. 

(2)  Misunderstanding  on  the  part  of  the  public, 
and  also  to  some  extent  on  the  part  of  teachers,  of 
our  aims,  ability,  and  attitude.     This  I  am  glad  to 
say  is  continually  lessening.     We  can   scarcely  ex 
pect  that  each  of  our  five  hundred  assistants  should 
be  thoroly    imbued    with  the    spirit    of    helpfulness 
toward  the  schools  or  even  that  they  should  perfect 
ly  understand  what  we  desire  and  aim  to  do.     Nor 
can  we  expect  that  our  wish  to  aid  should  be  appre 
ciated  by  every  one  of  fifty  thousand  teachers  or  a 
million  parents.     This  will  come  in  time. 

(3)  A  low  standard  of  honesty  on  the  part  of  cer 
tain  users  of  the  library.     It  is  somewhat  dishearten* 
ing  to  those  who  are  laboring  to  do  a  public  service 
to  find  that  some  of  those  whom  they  are  striving  to 
benefit,  look  upon  them  merely  as  easy  game.     To 
prevent  this  and  at  the  same  time  to  withstand  those 
who  urge  that  such  misuse  of  the  library  should  be 
met  by  the  withdrawal  of  present  privileges  and  fa 
cilities  uses  up  energy  that  might  otherwise  be  di 
rected  toward  the  improvement  of  our  service.     Now, 
like  the  intoxicated  man,  we  sometimes  refuse  invita 
tions  to  advance  because  it  is  "all  we  can  do  to  stay 
where  we  are."     Here  is  an  opportunity  for  all  the 
selective  influences  that  we  may  bring  to  bear,  and 


SELECTIVE    EDUCATION  33 

unfortunately  the  library  can  have  but  little  part 
in  these. 

Have  I  wandered  too  far  from  my  theme?  The 
good  that  a  public  library  may  do,  the  influence  that 
it  may  exert,  and  the  position  that  it  may  assume  in 
a  community,  depend  very  largely  on  the  ability  and 
tact  with  which  it  is  administered  and  the  resources 
at  its  disposal.  Its  public  services  may  be  various, 
but  probably  there  is  no  place  in  which  it  may  be  of 
more  value  than  side  by  side  with  the  public  school ; 
and  I  venture  to  think  that  this  is  the  case  largely 
because  education  to  be  complete  must  select  as  well 
as  train,  must  compel  the  fit  to  step  forward  and  the 
unfit  to  retire,  and  must  do  this,  not  only  at  the  out 
set  of  a  course  of  training  but  continuously  thruout 
its  duration.  We  speak  of  a  student  being  "put  thru 
the  mill,"  and  we  must  not  forget  that  a  mill  not 
only  grinds  and  stamps  into  shape  but  also  sifts  and 
selects.  A  finished  product  of  a  given  grade  is  al 
ways  such  not  only  by  virtue  of  formation  and  adap 
tation  but  also  by  virtue  of  selection.  In  human 
training  one  of  the  most  potent  of  these  selective 
agencies  is  the  individual  will,  and  to  train  that  will 
and  make  it  effective  in  the  right  direction  there  is 
nothing  better  than  constant  association  with  the 
records  of  past  aims  and  past  achievements.  This 
must  be  my  excuse  for  saying  so  much  of  libraries 
in  general,  and  of  one  library  in  particular,  in  an  ad 
dress  on  what  I  have  ventured  to  give  the  name  of 
Selective  Education. 


THE  USES  OF  FICTION  * 

Literature  is  becoming  daily  more  of  a  dynamic 
and  less  of  a  static  phenomenon.  In  other  days  the 
great  body  of  written  records  remained  more  or  less 
stable  and  with  its  attendant  body  of  tradition  did 
its  work  by  a  sort  of  quiet  pressure  on  that  portion 
of  the  community  just  beneath  it — on  a  special  class 
peculiarly  subject  to  its  influence.  To-day  we  have 
added  to  this  effect  that  of  a  moving  multitude  of 
more  or  less  ephemeral  books,  which  appear,  do  their 
work,  and  pass  on  out  of  sight.  They  are  light,  but 
they  make  up  for  their  lack  of  weight  by  the  speed 
and  ease  with  which  they  move.  Owing  to  them  the 
use  of  books  is  becoming  less  and  less  limited  to  a 
class,  and  more  and  more  familiar  to  the  masses. 
The  book  nowadays  is  in  motion.  Even  the  classics, 
the  favorites  of  other  days,  have  left  their  musty 
shelves  and  are  moving  out  among  the  people.  Where 
one  man  knew  and  loved  Shakespeare  a  century  ago, 
a  thousand  know  and  love  him  to-day.  The  literary 
blood  is  circulating  and  in  so  doing  is  giving  life  to 
the  body  politic.  In  thus  wearing  itself  out  the  book 
is  creating  a  public  appreciation  that  makes  itself 
felt  in  a  demand  for  reprinting,  hence  worthy  books 
are  surer  of  perpetuation  in  this  swirling  current 
than  they  were  in  the  old  time  reservoir.  But  be 
sides  these  books  whose  literary  life  is  continuous, 
though  their  paper  and  binding  may  wear  out,  there 
are  other  books  that  vanish  utterly.  By  the  time  that 
the  material  part  of  them  needs  renewing,  the  book 

*  Read  before  the  American  Library  Association,  Asheville  Con 
ference,  May  28,  1907. 


36  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

itself  has  done  its  work.  Its  value  at  that  moment 
is  not  enough,  or  is  not  sufficiently  appreciated,  to 
warrant  reprinting.  It  drops  out  of  sight  and  its 
place  is  taken  by  another,  fresh  from  the  press.  This 
part  of  our  moving  literature  is  what  is  called 
ephemeral,  and  properly  so;  but  no  stigma  neces 
sarily  attaches  to  the  name.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
impossible  to  draw  a  line  between  the  ephemeral  and 
the  durable.  "One  storm  in  the  world's  history  has 
never  cleared  off,"  said  the  wit — "the  one  we  are 
having  now."  Yet  the  conditions  of  to-day,  literary 
as  well  as  meteorological,  are  not  necessarily  lasting. 

We  are  accustomed  to  regard  what  we  call  stand 
ard  literature  as  necessarily  the  standard  of  innum 
erable  centuries  to  come,  forgetful  of  the  fact  that 
other  so-called  standards  have  "had  their  day  and 
ceased  to  be."  Some  literature  lasts  a  century,  some 
a  year,  some  a  week;  where  shall  we  draw  the  line 
below  which  all  must  be  condemned  as  ephemeral? 
Is  it  not  possible  that  all  literary  work  that  quickly 
achieves  a  useful  purpose  and  having  achieved  it 
passes  at  once  out  of  sight,  may  really  count  for  as 
much  as  one  that  takes  the  course  of  years  to  pro 
duce  its  slow  results?  The  most  ephemeral  of  all 
our  literary  productions — the  daily  paper — is  incal 
culably  the  most  influential,  and  its  influence  large 
ly  depends  on  this  dynamic  quality  that  has  been 
noted — the  penetrative  power  of  a  tiling  of  light 
weight  moving  at  a  high  speed.  And  this  penetra 
tive  powrer  effective  literature  must  have  to-day  on 
account  of  the  vastly  increased  mass  of  modern  read 
ers. 

Reading  is  no  longer  confined  to  a  class,  it  is  well- 
nigh  universal,  in  our  own  country,  at  least.  And 
the  habit  of  mind  of  the  thoughtful  and  intent  read 
er  is  not  an  affair  of  one  generation  but  of  many. 


USES    OF    FICTION  37 

New  readers  are  young  readers,  and  they  have  the 
characteristics  of  intellectual  youth. 

Narrative — the  recapitulation  of  one's  own  or 
someone  else's  experience,  the  telling  of  a  story — is 
the  earliest  form  in  which  artistic  effort  of  any  kind 
is  appreciated.  The  pictorial  art  that  appeals  to  the 
young  or  the  ignorant  is  the  kind  that  tells  a  story— 
perhaps  historical  painting  on  enormous  canvasses, 
perhaps  the  small  genre  picture,  possibly  something 
symbolic  or  mythological;  but  at  any  rate  it  must 
embody  a  narrative,  whether  it  is  that  of  the  signing 
of  a  treaty,  a  charge  of  dragoons,  a  declaration  of 
love  or  the  feeding  of  chickens.  The  same  is  true  of 
music.  The  popular  song  tells  something,  almost 
without  exception.  Even  in  instrumental  music, 
outside  of  dance  rhythms,  whose  suggestion  of  the 
delights  of  bodily  motion  is  a  reason  of  their  popu 
larity,  the  beginner  likes  program  music  of  some 
kind,  or  at  least  its  suggestion.  So  it  is  in  literature. 
With  those  who  are  intellectually  young,  whether 
young  in  years  or  not,  the  narrative  form  of  expres 
sion  is  all  in  all.  It  is,  of  course,  in  all  the  arts,  a 
most  important  mode,  even  in  advanced  stages  of 
development.  We  shall  never  be  able  to  do  without 
narrative  in  painting,  sculpture,  music  and  poetry; 
but  wherever,  in  a  given  community,  the  preference 
for  this  form  of  expression  in  any  art  is  excessive, 
we  may  be  sure  that  appreciation  of  that  form  of  art 
is  newly  aroused.  This  is  an  interesting  symptom 
and  a  good  sign.  To  be  sure,  apparent  intellectual 
youth  may  be  the  result  of  intellectual  decadence; 
there  is  a  second  as  well  as  a  first  childhood,  but  it 
is  not  difficult  to  distinguish  between  them.  In  gen 
eral,  if  a  large  proportion  of  those  in  a  community 
who  like  to  look  at  pictures,  prefer  such  as  "tell  a 
story,"  this  fact,  if  the  number  of  the  appreciative 


38  LIBRABIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

is  at  the  same  time  increasing,  means  a  newly  stimu 
lated  interest  in  art.  And  similarly,  if  a  large  pro 
portion  of  those  persons  who  enjoy  reading  prefer 
the  narrative  forms  of  literature,  while  at  the  same 
time  their  total  numbers  are  on  the  increase,  this 
surely  indicates  a  newly  aroused  interest  in  books. 
And  this  is  precisely  the  situation  in  which  we  find 
ourselves  to-day.  A  very  large  proportion  of  the  lit 
erature  that  we  circulate  is  in  narrative  form — how 
large  a  proportion  I  daresay  few  of  us  realize.  Not 
only  all  the  fiction,  adult  and  juvenile,  but  all  the 
history,  biography  and  travel,  a  large  proportion  of 
literature  and  periodicals,  some  of  the  sciences,  in 
cluding  all  reports  of  original  research,  and  a  lesser 
proportion  of  the  arts,  philosophy  and  religion,  are 
in  this  form.  It  may  be  interesting  to  estimate  the 
percentage  of  narrative  circulated  by  a  large  public 
library,  and  I  have  attempted  this  in  the  case  of  the 
New  York  public  library  for  the  year  ending  Julv  1, 
1906. 

Class  Per  cent.  Estimated  per 

Fiction  cent,  of  narrative 

Juvenile   26 

Adult  32  58  58 

History  6  6 

Biography  3  3 

Travel  3  3 

Literature  7  3 

Periodicals  4  2 

Sciences  9  3 

Arts  3  i 

Philos.  &  Relig 2  I 

Foreign  5  4 

loo  84 

In  other  words,  if  my  estimates  are  not  too  much 
out  of  the  way — and  I  have  tried  to  be  conservative 
— only  16  per  cent,  of  our  whole  circulation,  and  38 
per  cent,  of  our  non-fiction,  is  non-narrative,  despite 
the  fact  that  our  total  fiction  percentage  is  low. 


USES    OF    FICTION  39 

I  attach  little  importance  in  this  regard  to  any 
distinction  between  true  and  fictitious  narrative. 
People  who  read  novels  do  not  enjoy  them  simply  be 
cause  the  subject  matter  is  untrue.  They  enjoy  the 
books  because  they  are  interesting.  In  fact,  in  most 
good  fiction,  little  beside  the  actual  sequence  of  the 
events  in  the  plot  and  the  names  of  the  characters 
is  untrue.  The  delineation  of  character,  the  descrip 
tions  of  places  and  events  and  the  statements  of  fact 
are  intended  to  be  true,  and  the  further  they  depart 
from  truth  the  less  enjoyable  they  are.  Indeed, 
when  one  looks  closely  into  the  matter,  the  dividing 
line  between  what  we  call  truth  and  fiction  in  narra 
tive  grows  more  and  more  hazy. 

In  pictorial  art  we  do  not  attempt  to  make  it  at 
all.  Our  museums  do  not  classify  their  pictures  into 
true  and  imaginary.  Our  novels  contain  so  much 
truth  and  our  other  narrative  works  so  much  fiction, 
that  it  is  almost  as  difficult  to  draw  the  line  in  the 
the  literary  as  it  is  in  the  pictorial  arts.  And  in 
any  case  objections  to  a  work  of  fiction,  as  well  as 
commendations,  must  be  based  on  considerations 
apart  from  this  classification. 

To  represent  a  fictitious  story  as  real  or  an  im 
aginary  portrait  as  a  true  one  is,  of  course,  a  fault, 
but  the  story  and  the  portrait  may  both  be  of  the 
highest  excellence  when  the  subjects  are  wholly  im 
aginary.  It  should  be  rioted  that  the  crime  of  false 
representation,  when  committed  with  success,  re 
moves  a  work  from  library  classification  as  fiction 
and  places  it  in  one  of  the  other  classes.  Indeed,  it 
is  probable  that  much  more  lasting  harm  is  done  by 
false  non-fiction  than  by  fiction.  The  reader,  pro 
vided  he  uses  literature  temperately,  has  much  less 
need  to  beware  of  the  novel,  which  he  reads  frankly 
for  entertainment,  than  of  the  history  full  of  "things 


40  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

that  are  not  so,"  of  the  biased  biography,  of  science 
"popularized"  out  of  all  likeness  to  nature,  of  absurd 
theories  in  sociology  or  cosmology,  of  silly  and  crude 
ideas  masquerading  as  philosophy,  of  the  out-and- 
out  falsehood  of  fake  travellers  and  pseudo-natural 
ists. 

In  what  has  gone  before  it  has  been  assumed  that 
the  reader  is  temperate.  One  may  read  to  excess 
either  in  fiction  or  non-fiction,  and  the  result  is  the 
same;  mental  over-stimulation,  with  the  resulting  re 
action.  One  may  thus  intoxicate  himself  with  his 
tory,  psychology  or  mathematics — the  mathematics- 
drunkard  is  the  worst  of  all  literary  debauchees 
when  he  does  exist — and  the  only  reason  why  fiction- 
drunkenness  is  more  prevalent  is  that  fiction  is  more 
attractive  to  the  average  man.  We  do  not  have  to 
warn  the  reader  against  over-indulgence  in  biogra 
phy  or  art-criticism,  any  more  than  we  have  to  put 
away  the  vicliy  bottle  when  a  bibulous  friend  ap 
pears,  or  forbid  the  children  to  eat  too  many  shred 
ded-wheat  biscuits.  Fiction  has  the  fatal  gift  of  be 
ing  too  entertaining.  The  novel-writer  must  be  in 
teresting  or  he  fails;  the  historian  or  the  psycholo 
gist  does  not  often  regard  it  as  necessary — unless  he 
happens  to  be  a  Frenchman. 

But  with  this  danger  of  literary  surfeit  or  over- 
stimulation,  I  submit  that  the  librarian  has  nothing 
to  do ;  it  is  beyond  his  sphere,  at  least  in  so  far  as  he 
deals  with  the  adult  reader.  We  furnish  parks  and 
playgrounds  for  our  people;  we  police  them  and  see 
that  they  contain  nothing  harmful,  but  we  cannot 
guarantee  that  they  will  not  be  used  to  excess — that 
a  man  may  not,  for  example,  be  so  enraptured  with 
the  trees  and  the  squirrels  that  he  will  give  up  to 
their  contemplation  time  that  should  be  spent  in 
supporting  his  family.  So  in  the  library  we  may 


USES    OF    FICTION  41 

and  do  see  that  harmful  literature  is  excluded,  but 
we  cannot  be  expected  to  see  that  books  which  are 
not  in  themselves  injurious  are  not  sometimes  used 
to  excess. 

I  venture  to  suggest  that  very  much  of  our  feel 
ing  of  disquietude  about  the  large  use  of  fiction  in 
the  public  library  and  elsewhere  arises  from  our 
misapprehension  of  something  that  must  always 
force  itself  upon  the  attention  in  a  state  of  society 
where  public  education  and  public  taste  are  on  the 
increase.  In  this  case  the  growth  will  necessarily 
be  uneven  in  different  departments  of  knowledge  and 
taste,  and  in  different  localities;  so  that  discrepan 
cies  frequently  present  themselves.  We  may  ob 
serve,  for  instance,  a  quietly  and  tastefully  dressed 
woman  reading,  we  will  say,  Laura  Jean  Libbey. 
We  are  disconcerted,  and  the  effect  is  depressing. 
But  the  discrepancy  may  arise  in  either  of  two  ways. 
If  we  have  here  a  person  formerly  possessing  good 
taste  both  in  dress  and  reading,  whose  taste  in  the 
latter  regard  has  deteriorated,  we  certainly  have 
cause  for  sadness;  but  if,  as  is  much  more  likely,  we 
have  one  who  had  formerly  bad  taste  of  both  kinds 
and  whose  taste  in  dress  has  improved,  we  should 
rather  rejoice.  The  argument  is  the  same  whether 
the  change  has  taken  place  in  the  same  generation 
or  in  more  than  one.  Our  masses  are  moving  up 
ward  and  the  progress  along  the  more  material  lines 
is  often  more  rapid  than  in  matters  of  the  intellect. 
Or,  on  the  contrary,  intellectual  progress  may  be  in 
advance  of  manners.  Such  discrepancies  are  fre 
quently  commented  upon  by  foreign  travelers  in  the 
United  States,  who  almost  invariably  misinterpret 
them  in  the  same  way.  Can  we  blame  them,  when 
we  make  the  same  mistake  ourselves?  M.  Jules  Hur- 
et?  in  his  recent  interesting  book  "JSn  Amerique," 


42  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

notes  frequently  the  lapses  in  manners  and  taste  of 
educated  persons  among  us.  He  describes,  for  in 
stance,  the  bad  table-manners  of  a  certain  clergy 
man.  His  thought  is  evidently,  "How  shocking  that 
a  clergyman  should  act  in  this  way !"  But  we  might 
also  put  it:  "How  admirable  that  professional  edu 
cation  in  this  country  is  so  easily  obtained  that  one 
of  a  class  in  which  such  manners  prevail  can  secure 
it!  How  encouraging  that  he  should  desire  to  enter 
the  ministry  and  succeed  in  doing  so!v  These  are 
extreme  standpoints;  we  need  of  course  endorse 
neither  of  them.  But  when  I  find  that  on  the  upper 
west  side  of  New  York,  where  the  patrons  of  our 
branch  libraries  are  largely  the  wives  and  daughters 
of  business  men  with  good  salaries,  whose  general 
scale  of  living  is  high,  the  percentage  of  fiction  cir 
culated  is  unduly  great,  I  do  not  say,  as  I  am  tempt 
ed  to  do  "How  surprising  and  how  discouraging  that 
persons  of  such  apparent  cultivation  should  read 
nothing  but  fiction,  and  that  not  of  the  highest 
grade !"  I  say  rather :  "What  an  evidence  it  is  of  our 
great  material  prosperity  that  persons  in  an  early 
stage  of  mental  development,  as  evidenced  by  undue 
preference  for  narrative  in  literature,  are  living  in 
such  comfort  or  even  luxury !" 

Is  not  this  the  right  way  to  look  at  it?  I  confess 
that  I  can  see  no  reason  for  despairing  of  the  Amer 
ican  people  because  it  reads  more  fiction  than  it  used 
to  read,  so  long  as  this  is  for  the  same  reason  that 
a  ten  year  old  boy  reads  more  stories  than  a  baby. 
Intellectual  youth  is  at  least  an  advance  over  mental 
infancy  so  long  as  it  is  first  childhood — not  second. 
It  is  undoubtedly  our  duty,  as  it  is  our  pleasure,  to 
help  these  people  to  grow,  but  we  cannot  force  them, 
and  should  not  try.  Complete  growth  may  take  sev 
eral  generations.  And  even  when  full  stature  has 


USES    OF    FICTION  43 

been  obtained,  literature  in  its  narrative  modes, 
though  not  so  exclusively  as  now,  will  still  be  loved 
and  read.  Romance  will  always  serve  as  the  dessert 
in  the  feast  of  reason — and  we  should  recollect  that 
sugar  is  now  highly  regarded  as  a  food.  It  is  a  pro 
ducer  of  energy  in  easily  available  form,  and,  think 
ing  on  some  such  novels  as  "Uncle  Tom,"  "Die  Waf- 
fen  nieder"  and  shall  we  say  "The  jungle"?  we  real 
ize  that  this  thing  is  a  parable,  which  the  despiser 
of  fiction  may  well  read  as  he  runs. 


THE  VALUE  OF  ASSOCIATION  * 

Man  is  a  gregarious  animal ;  he  cannot  think,  act, 
or  even  exist  except  in  certain  relations  to  others  of 
his  kind.  For  a  complete  description  of  those  rela 
tions  we  must  go  to  a  treatise  on  sociology ;  our  pres 
ent  subject  is  a  very  brief  consideration  of  certain 
groups  of  individuals,  natural  or  voluntary,  and  the 
application  of  the  laws  that  govern  such  groups  to 
the  voluntary  associations  with  which  we  are  all 
familiar  in  library  work.  Men  have  joined  together 
to  effect  certain  things  that  they  could  not  accom 
plish  singly,  ever  since  two  savages  found  that  they 
could  lift  a  heavy  log  or  stone  together,  when  neither 
one  could  manage  it  alone.  Until  recently  the  psy 
chology  of  human  groups  has  received  little  study. 
Le  Bon,  in  his  book  on  "The  Crowd,"  gives  the  mod 
ern  treatment  of  it.  A  group  of  persons  does  not 
think  and  act  precisely  as  each  of  its  component  in 
dividuals  would  think  or  act.  The  very  act  of  as 
sociation,  loose  as  it  may  be,  introduces  a  new  fac 
tor.  Even  the  two  savages  lifting  the  log  do  not 
work  together  precisely  as  either  would  have  worked 
singly.  Their  co-operation  affects  their  activity;  and 
both  thought  and  action  may  likewise  be  affected  in 
larger  groupings  even  by  the  mere  proximity  of  the 
individuals  of  the  group,  where  there  is  no  stronger 
bond. 

But  although  the  spirit  that  collectively  animates 
a  group  of  men  cannot  be  calculated  by  taking  an 
arithmetical  sum,  it  does  depend  on  that  possessed 

*  An  address  delivered  before  the  Library  Associations  of  Iowa, 
Nebraska,  Kansas,  Missouri,  Indiana  and  Ohio,  October  9-18,  1907. 


46  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

by  each  individual  in  the  group,  and  more  particular 
ly  on  what  is  common  to  them  all  and  on  the  nature 
of  the  bonds  that  connect  them.  Even  a  chance 
group  of  persons  previously  unconnected  and  unre 
lated  is  bound  together  by  feelings  common  to  all 
humanity  and  may  be  appealed  to  collectively  on 
such  grounds.  The  haphazard  street  crowd  thrills 
with  horror  at  the  sight  of  a  baby  toddling  in  front 
of  a  trolley-car  and  shouts  with  joy  when  the  motor- 
man  stops  just  in  time.  But  the  same  crowd,  if  com 
posed  of  newly-arrived  Poles,  Hungarians  and  Slo 
vaks,  would  fail  utterly  to  respond  to  some  patriotic 
appeal  that  might  move  an  American  crowd  pro 
foundly.  You  may  sway  a  Methodist  congregation 
with  a  tale  of  John  Wesley  that  would  leave  Presby 
terians  or  Episcopalians  cold.  Try  a  Yale  mob  with 
"Boola"  and  then  play  the  same  tune  at  Princeton, 
and  watch  the  effect. 

Thus,  the  more  carefully  our  group  is  selected 
the  more  particular  and  definite  are  the  motives  that 
we  can  bring  to  bear  in  it,  and  the  more  powerful 
will  its  activities  be  along  its  own  special  lines.  The 
mob  in  the  street  may  be  roused  by  working  on  ele 
mental  passions — so  roused  it  will  kill  or  burn,  but 
yon  cannot  excite  in  it  enthusiasm  for  Dante's  In 
ferno,  or  induce  it  to  contribute  money  or  labor 
toward  the  preparation  of  a  new  annotated  edition. 
To  get  such  enthusiasm  and  stimulate  such  action 
you  must  work  upon  a  body  of  men  selected  and 
brought  together  for  this  very  purpose. 

Besides  this,  we  must  draw  a  distinction  between 
natural  and  artificial  groups.  The  group  brought 
together  by  natural  causes  and  not  by  man's  contriv 
ing  is  generally  lower  in  the  scale  of  civilization 
when  it  acts  collectively  than  any  one  of  its  compon 
ents.  This  is  the  case  with  a  mob,  a  tribe,  even  a 


VALUE    OF    ASSOCIATION  47 

municipal  group.  But  an  artificial  or  selected  group, 
where  the  grouping  is  for  a  purpose  and  has  been 
specially  effected  with  that  end  in  view  may  act  more 
intelligently,  and  be,  so  far  as  its  special  activities 
are  concerned,  more  advanced  in  the  scale  of  progress 
than  its  components  as  individuals.  There  is  the 
same  difference  as  between  a  man's  hand  and  a  deli 
cate  tool.  The  former  is  the  result  of  physical  evo 
lution  only;  the  latter  of  evolution  into  which  the 
brain  of  man  has  entered  as  a  factor.  The  tool  is 
not  as  good  for  "all  round"  use  as  the  hand;  but  to 
accomplish  its  particular  object  it  is  immeasurably 
superior. 

If,  then,  we  are  to  accomplish  anything  by  tak 
ing  advantage  of  the  very  peculiar  crowd  or  group 
psychology — owing  to  which  a  collected  body  of  men 
may  feel  as  a  group  and  act  as  a  group,  differently 
from  the  way  in  which  any  one  of  its  components 
would  feel  or  act — we  must  see  that  our  group  is 
properly  selected  and  constituted.  This  does  not 
mean  that  we  are  to  go  about  and  choose  individ 
uals,  one  by  one,  by  the  exercise  of  personal  judg 
ment.  Such  a  method  is  generalbr  inferior  and  un 
necessary.  If  we  desire  to  separate  the  fine  from  the 
coarse  grains  in  a  sand-pile  we  do  not  set  to  work 
with  a  microscope  to  measure  them,  grain  by  grain; 
we  use  a  sieve.  The  sieve  will  not  do  to  separate 
iron  filings  from  copper  filings  of  exactly  the  same 
size,  but  here  a  magnet  will  do  the  business.  And  so 
separation  or  selection  can  almost  always  be  accom 
plished  by  choosing  an  agency  adapted  to  the  con 
ditions;  and  such  agencies  often  act  automatically 
without  the  intervention  of  the  human  will.  In  a 
voluntary  association  formed  to  accomplish  a  defi 
nite  purpose  we  have  a  self-selected  group.  Such  a 
body  may  be  freely  open  to  the  public,  as  all  our  li- 


48  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

brary  clubs  and  associations  practically  are;  yet  it 
is  still  selective,  for  no  one  would  care  to  join  it  who 
is  not  in  some  way  interested  in  its  objects.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  qualifications  for  membership  may 
be  numerous  and  rigid,  in  which  case  the  selection 
is  more  limited.  The  ideal  of  efficiency  in  an  asso 
ciation  is  probably  reached  when  the  body  is  formed 
for  a  single  definite  purpose  and  the  terms  of  ad 
mission  are  so  arranged  that  each  of  its  members  is 
eager  above  all  things  to  achieve  its  end  and  is  spe 
cially  competent  to  work  for  it,  the  purpose  of  the 
grouping  being  merely  to  attain  the  object  more 
surely,  thoroughly  and  rapidly.  A  good  example  is 
a  thoroughly  trained  military  organization,  all  of 
whose  members  are  enthusiastic  in  the  cause  for 
which  the  body  is  fighting — a  band  of  patriots,  we 
will  say — or  perhaps  a  band  of  brigands,  for  what  we 
have  been  saying  applies  to  evil  as  well  as  to  good 
associations.  The  most  efficient  of  such  bodies  may 
be  very  temporary,  as  when  three  persons,  meeting 
by  chance,  unite  to  help  each  other  over  a  wall  that 
none  of  them  could  scale  by  himself,  and,  having 
reached  the  other  side,  separate  again.  The  more 
clearly  cut  and  definite  the  purpose  the  less  the 
necessity  of  retaining  the  association  after  its  ac 
complishment.  The  more  efficient  the  association 
the  sooner  its  aims  are  accomplished  and  the  sooner 
it  is  disbanded.  Such  groups  or  bodies,  by  their 
very  nature  are  affairs  of  small  detail  and  not  of 
large  and  comprehensive  purpose.  As  they  broaden 
out  into  catholicity  they  necessarily  lose  in  efficiency. 
And  even  when  they  are  accomplishing  their  aims 
satisfactorily  the  very  largeness  of  those  aims,  the 
absence  of  sharp  outline  and  clear  definition,  fre 
quently  gives  rise  to  complaint.  I  know  of  clubs  and 
associations  that  are  doing  an  immense  amount  of 


VALUE    OF    ASSOCIATION  49 

good,  in  some  cases  altering  for  the  better  the  whole 
intellectual  or  moral  tone  of  a  community,  but  that 
are  the  objects  of  criticism  because  they  do  not  act 
in  matters  of  detail. 

"Why  don't  they  do  something?"  is  the  constant 
cry.  And  "doing  something,"  as  you  may  presently 
discover,  is  carrying  on  some  small  definite,  relative 
ly  unimportant  activity  that  is  capable  of  clear  des 
cription  and  easily  fixes  the  attention,  while  the 
greater  services,  to  the  public  and  to  the  individual, 
of  the  association's  quiet  influences  pass  unnoticed. 
The  church  that  has  driven  out  of  business  one  cor 
ner-saloon  gets  more  praise  than  the  one  that  has 
made  better  men  and  women  of  a  whole  generation 
in  one  neighborhood;  the  police  force  that  catches 
one  sensational  murderer  is  more  applauded  than  the 
one  that  has  made  life  and  property  safe  for  ye?,rs 
in  its  community  by  quiet,  firm  pressure. 

There  is  no  reason,  of  course,  why  the  broader 
and  the  more  definite  activities  may  not  be  united, 
to  some  degree,  in  one  organization.  Either  smaller 
groups  with  related  aims  may  federate  for  the  larger 
purpose,  or  the  larger  may  itself  be  the  primary 
group,  and  may  subdivide  into  sections  each  with 
its  specified  object.  Both  these  plans  or  a  combina 
tion  of  the  two  may  be  seen  in  many  of  our  large  or 
ganizations,  and  it  is  this  combination  that  seems 
finally  to  have  been  selected  as  the  proper  form  of 
union  for  the  libraries  and  the  librarians  of  the 
United  States.  We  have  a  large  organization  which, 
as  it  has  grown  more  and  more  unwieldy,  has  been 
subdivided  into  smaller  specialized  sections  without 
losing  its  continuity  for  its  broader  and  perhaps 
vaguer  work.  At  the  same  time,  specialized  bodies 
with  related  aims  have  been  partially  or  wholly  ab 
sorbed,  until,  by  processes  partly  of  subdivision  and 


50  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

partly  of  accretion,  we  have  a  body  capable  of  deal 
ing  alike  with  the  general  and  the  special  problems  of 
library  work.  It  should  not  be  forgotten,  however, 
that  its  success  in  dealing  with  both  kinds  of  prob 
lems  is  still  conditioned  by  the  laws  already  laid 
down.  The  general  association,  as  it  grows  larger, 
will  be  marked  less  and  less  by  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
specialist,  will  be  less  and  less  efficient,  will  move 
more  slowly,  will  deliver  its  opinions  with  reticence 
and  will  hesitate  to  act  upon  them.  The  smaller  con 
stituent  bodies  will  be  affected  by  none  of  these  draw 
backs,  but  their  purposes  appeal  to  the  few  and  their 
actions,  though  more  energetic,  will  often  seem  to 
the  majority  of  the  larger  group  devoid  of  meaning. 
This  is,  of  course,  the  case  with  the  National  Educa 
tional  Association,  the  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  and  hosts  of  similar  bodies 
here  and  abroad.  To  state  the  difficulty  is  merely 
to  confess  that  all  attempts  hitherto  have  failed  to 
form  a  group  that  is  at  once  comprehensive,  power 
ful  and  efficient,  both  in  the  larger  matters  with 
which  it  deals  and  in  details. 

Probably  the  most  successful  attempt  of  this  kind 
is  formulated  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  itself  and  is  being  carried  on  in  our  country 
from  day  to  day,  yet  successful  as  it  is,  our  history 
is  witness,  and  the  daily  press  testifies,  that  the  com 
bination  of  general  and  local  governments  has  its 
weak  points  and  is  dependent  for  its  smooth  work 
ing  on  the  cordial  consent  and  forbearance  of  the 
governed.  This  is  true  also  of  smaller  combinations. 
In  our  own  organization  it  is  easy  to  find  fault,  it 
is  easy  to  discover  points  of  friction ;  only  by  the 
cordial  effort  of  every  member  to  minimize  these 
points  can  such  an  organization  begin  to  accomplish 
its  aims.  Failure  is  much  more  apt  to  be  due  to  lack 


VALUE    OF    ASSOCIATION  51' 

of  appreciation  of  this  fact  than  to  any  defect  in  the 
machinery  of  organization.  This  being  the  case  we 
are  thrown  back  upon  consideration  of  the  member 
ship  of  our  institution.  How  should  it  be  selected 
and  how  constituted? 

The  constitution  of  the  association  says  that 
"Any  person  or  institution  engaged  in  library  work 
may  become  a  member  by  paying  the  annual  dues, 
and  others  after  election  by  the  executive  board/' 
We  have  thus  two  classes  of  members,  those  by  their 
own  choice  and  those  by  election.  The  annual  lists 
of  members  do  not  record  the  distinction,  but  among 
those  in  the  latest  list  we  find  24  booksellers,  17  pub 
lishers,  5  editors,  9  school  and  college  officials,  8  gov 
ernment  employees  not  in  libraries,  and  24  wives 
and  relatives  of  other  members,  wrhile  in  the  case  of 
132  persons  no  qualification  is  stated  in  the  list.  We 
have  or  have  had  as  our  associates,  settlement  work 
ers,  lawryers,  lecturers,  indexers,  binders,  and  so  on 
almost  indefinitely.  Our  membership  is  thus  freely 
open  to  librarians,  interpreting  this  word  very  broad 
ly,  and  to  any  others  that  we  may  desire  to  have  with 
us,  which  means,  practically,  any  who  have  sufficient 
interest  in  library  work  to  come  to  the  meetings.  We 
must,  therefore,  be  classed  with  what  may  be  called 
the  "open"  as  opposed  to  the  "closed"  professional 
or  technical  associations.  The  difference  may  be 
emphasized  by  a  reference  to  two  well-known  New 
York  clubs,  the  Players  and  the  Authors.  These  or 
ganizations  would  appear  by  their  names  to  be  com 
posed  respectively  of  actors  and  writers.  The  for 
mer,  however,  admits  also  to  membership  persons  in 
terested  in  the  drama,  which  may  mean  little  or 
much,  while  the  Authors  Club,  despite  repeated  ef 
forts  to  broaden  it  out  in  the  same  way,  has  insisted 
on  admitting  none  but  bona  fide  authors.  In  advo- 


52  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

cacy  of  the  first  plan  it  may  be  said  that  by  adopting 
it  the  Players  has  secured  larger  membership,  em 
bracing  many  men  of  means.  Its  financial  standing 
is  better  and  it  is  enabled  to  own  a  fine  club  house. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Authors  has  a  small  member 
ship,  and  owns  practically  no  property,  but  makes 
up  in  esprit  de  corps  what  it  lacks  in  these  other  re 
spects.  It  is  another  phase  of  the  question  of  spe 
cialization  that  we  have  already  considered.  The 
larger  and  broader  body  has  certain  advantages,  the 
smaller  and  more  compact,  certain  others.  We 
have,  doubtless  been  right  in  deciding,  or  rather  in 
accepting  what  circumstances  seem  to  have  decided 
for  us,  that  our  own  association  shall  be  of  the  larger 
and  less  closely  knit  type,  following  the  analogy  of 
the  National  Educational  Association  and  the  var 
ious  associations  for  the  advancement  of  science, 
American,  British  and  French,  rather  than  that  of 
the  Society  of  Civil  Engineers,  for  instance,  or  the 
various  learned  academies.  Our  body  has  thus  great 
er  general  but  less  special  influence,  just  as  on  a 
question  of  general  scientific  policy  a  petition  from 
the  American  association  might  carry  greater 
weight,  whereas  on  a  question  of  engineering  it 
would  be  incomparably  inferior  to  an  opinion  of  the 
civil  engineers.  There  is  in  this  country,  it  is  true, 
a  general  scientific  body  of  limited  membership — the 
National  Academy  of  Sciences,  which  speaks  both 
on  general  and  special  questions  with  expert  author 
ity.  In  the  formation  of  the  American  Library  In 
stitute  it  was  sought  to  creat%ome  such  special  body 
of  librarians;  but  it  is  too  soon  to  say  whether  or 
not  that  expectation  is  to  be  fulfilled.  The  fact  re 
mains  that  in  the  American  Library  Association  we 
are  committed  to  very  nearly  the  broadest  plan  of 
organization  and  work  that  is  possible.  We  are 


VALUE    OF    ASSOCIATION  53 

united  only  by  our  connection  with  library  work  or 
our  interest  in  its  success,  and  are  thus  limited  in 
our  discussions  and  actions  as  a  body  to  the  most 
general  problems  that  may  arise  in  this  connection, 
leaving  the  special  work  to  our  sections  and  affili 
ated  societies,  which  are  themselves  somewhat  ham 
pered  by  our  size  in  the  treatment  of  the  particular 
subjects  that  come  before  them,  inasmuch  as  they 
are  not  separate  groups  whose  freedom  of  action  no 
one  can  call  in  question. 

In  illustration  of  the  limitations  of  a  general 
body  of  the  size  and  scope  of  our  Association,  I  may 
perhaps  be  allowed  to  adduce  the  recent  disagree 
ment  among  librarians  regarding  the  copyright  ques 
tion,  or  rather  regarding  the  proper  course  to  be  fol 
lowed  in  connection  with  the  conference  on  that 
question  called  by  the  Librarian  of  Congress.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  this  conference  was  semi-of 
ficial  and  was  due  to  the  desire  of  members  of  Con 
gress  to  frame  a  bill  that  should  be  satisfactory  to 
the  large  number  of  conflicting  interests  involved. 
To  this  conference  our  Association  was  invited  to 
send,  and  did  send,  delegates.  It  is  obvious  that  if 
these  and  all  the  other  delegates  to  the  conference 
had  simply  held  out  for  the  pro  visions  most  favor 
able  to  themselves  no  agreement  would  have  been 
possible  and  the  objects  of  the  conference  would 
have  been  defeated.  Kecogniziug  this,  all  the  bodies 
and  interests  represented  worked  from  the  begin 
ning  to  secure  an  agreement,  striving  only  that  it 
should  be  such  as  woufd  represent  a  minimum  of 
concession  on  all  sides.  This  viewT  was  shared  by 
the  delegates  of  this  Association.  The  law  as  it 
stood  was,  it  is  true,  most  favorable  to  libraries  in 
its  provisions  regarding  importation,  and  the  reten 
tion  of  these  provisions  might  have  been  facilitated 


54  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

by  withdrawal  from  the  conference  and  subsequent 
opposition  to  whatever  new  bill  might  have  been 
framed.  But  the  delegates  assumed  that  they  were 
appointed  to  confer,  not  to  withdraw,  and  that  if 
the  Association  had  desired  to  hold  aloof  from  the 
conference  that  result  would  have  been  best  attained 
by  appointing  no  delegates  at  all.  The  Association's 
delegates  accordingly  joined  with  their  fellows  in 
the  spirit  of  compromise  to  agree  on  such  a  bill  as 
might  be  least  unacceptable  to  all,  and  the  result 
was  a  measure  slightly,  but  only  slightly,  less  favor 
able  to  libraries  than  the  existing  law.  With  the 
presentation  of  this  bill  to  the  proper  committees  of 
Congress,  and  a  formal  statement  that  they  approved 
it  on  behalf  of  the  Association,  the  duties  of  the 
delegates  ended.  And  here  begins  to  appear  the  ap 
plicability  of  this  chapter  from  library  history  to 
what  has  preceded.  The  action  of  the  delegates  was 
officially  that  of  the  Association.  But  it  was  dis 
approved  by  very  many  members  of  the  Association 
on  the  ground  that  it  seemed  likely  to  result  in  les 
sening  the  importation  privilege  of  libraries.  Wheth 
er  these  dissidents  were  in  a  majority  or  not  it 
seemed  impossible  to  say.  The  Association's  legis 
lative  body,  the  Council,  twice  refused  to  disapprove 
or  instruct  the  delegates,  thus  tacitly  approving 
their  action,  but  the  dissidents  asserted  that  the 
Council,  in  this  respect,  did  not  rightly  reflect  the 
opinion  of  the  Association.  The  whole  situation  was 
an  instructive  illustration  of  the  difficulty  of  get 
ting  a  large  body  of  general  scope  to  act  on  a  defi 
nite,  circumscribed  question,  or  even  of  ascertain 
ing  its  opinion  or  its  wishes  regarding  such  action. 
Recognizing  this,  the  dissidents  properly  and  wisely 
formed  a  separate  association  with  a  single  end  in 
view — the  retention  of  present  library  importation 
privileges,  and  especially  the  defeat  of  the  part  of  the 


VALUE    OF    ASSOCIATION  55 

bill  affecting  such  privileges  as  drafted  in  the  con 
ference.  The  efforts  of  this  body  have  been  crowned 
with  success  in  that  the  bill  as  reported  by  the  com 
mittee  contains  a  modified  provision  acceptable  to 
the  dissidents.  Thus  a  relatively  small  body  formed 
for  a  definite  purpose  has  quickly  accomplished  that 
purpose,  while  the  objects  of  the  larger  body  have 
been  expressed  but  vaguely,  and  so  far  as  they  have 
been  definitely  formulated  have  failed  of  accomplish 
ment.  There  is  a  lesson  in  this  both  for  our  own  as 
sociation  and  for  others. 

It  must  not  be  assumed,  however,  that  limitation 
of  action  along  the  lines  I  have  indicated  means 
weakness  of  organization.  On  the  contrary,  foreign 
observers  have  generally  testified  to  the  exceptional 
strength  and  efficiency  of  societies  and  groups  of 
all  kinds  in  this  country.  It  may  be  interesting  to 
quote  here  what  a  recent  French  writer  on  the 
United  States  has  to  say  of  the  part  played  by  as 
sociations  of  all  kinds  in  our  national  life.  And,  in 
passing,  he  who  is  proud  of  his  country  nowadays 
should  read  what  is  said  of  her  by  French  and  Ger 
man,  and  even  English  writers.  The  muck-raking  is 
all  on  this  side  of  the  water.  The  writer  from  whom 
I  quote,  M.  Paul  de  Rousiers,  author  of  "La  Vie 
Americaine,"  does  not  commend  without  discrimina 
tion,  which  makes  what  he  has  to  say  of  more  value. 
He  notes  at  the  outset  that  "the  spirit  of  free  asso 
ciation  is  widely  extended  in  the  United  States,  and 
it  produces  results  of  surprising  efficiency."  There 
are  two  motives  for  association,  he  thinks,  the  con 
sciousness  of  weakness,  which  is  generally  operative 
abroad,  and  the  consciousness  of  strength,  which  is 
our  motive  here.  He  says: 

The  need  of  association  comes  generally  from  the  conscience 
of  one's  own  feebleness  or  indolence.  .  .  .  When  such  people 
join  they  add  together  their  incapacities;  hence  the  failure  of  many 


56  LIBKAEIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

societies  formed  with  great  eclat.  On  the  contrary,  when  men  ac 
customed  to  help  themselves  without  depending  on  their  neighbors 
form  an  association,  it  is  because  they  really  find  themselves  facing 
a  common  difficulty  .  .  .  such  persons  add  their  capacities;  they 
form  a  powerful  union  of  capables,  the  only  one  that  has  force. 
Hence  the  general  success  of  American  associations. 

The  radical  difference  in  the  motives  for  associa 
tion  here  and  in  the  old  world  was  noted  long  ago 
by  De  Tocqueville,  who  says: 

European  societies  are  naturally  led  to  introduce  into  their 
midst  military  customs  and  formulas.  .  .  .  The  members  of  such 
associations  respond  to  a  word  of  command  like  soldiers  in  a  cam 
paign;  they  profess  the  dogma  of  passive  obedience,  or  rather,  by 
uniting,  they  sacrifice  entirely,  at  a  single  stroke,  their  judgment 
and  free  will.  ...  In  American  associations,  on  the  other  hand, 
individual  independence  finds  its  part;  as  in  society  every  man 
moves  at  the  same  time  toward  the  same  goal,  but  all  are  not 
forced  to  go  by  the  same  road.  No  one  sacrifices  his  will  or  his 
reason,  but  applies  them  both  toward  the  success  of  the  common 
enterprise. 

Commenting  on  this,  De  Kousiers  goes  on : 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  discipline  necessary  to  the  pursuit  of 
the  common  end  is  less  exact  than  with  us.  As  far  as  I  can  judge, 
the  members  of  an  American  association,  on  the  contrary,  take 
their  obligations  more  seriously  than  we,  and  precisely  because 
they  have  undertaken  them  very  freely,  without  being  forced  into 
them  by  environment  or  fashion,  and  also  because  the  heads  of  the 
association  have  not  sought  to  make  it  serve  their  own  interests. 
In  fine,  their  discipline  is  strong,  but  it  is  applied  only  to  one  pre 
cise  object;  it  may  thus  subsist  intact  and  without  tyranny,  despite 
the  .most  serious  divergences  of  view  among  the  members  regard 
ing  objects  foreign  to  its  aim.  These  happy  conditions — this  large 
and  concrete  mind,  joined  to  the  effective  activity  of  the  Americans, 
have  given  rise  to  a  multitude  of  groups  that  are  rendering  the 
greatest  service. 

De  Kousiers  enlarges  on  this  point  at  great 
length  and  gives  many  illustrations.  He  returns  to 
it  even  when  he  appears  to  have  gone  on  to  other  sub 
jects.  In  an  account  of  a  visit  to  a  militia  encamp 
ment  in  Massachusetts,  where  he  was  inclined  at  the 
outset  to  scoff  at  the  lack  of  formal  military  train 
ing,  but  finally  became  enthusiastic  over  the  indi- 


VALUE    OP    ASSOCIATION  57 

vidual  efficiency  and  interest  of  the  militiamen,  he 
ends  by  saying: 

What  I  have  seen  here  resembles  what  I  have  seen  everywhere 
throughout  the  United  States;  each  organism,  each  individual,  pre 
serves  all  its  freedom,  as  far  as  it  can;  hence  the  limited  and 
special  character  of  the  public  authorities,  to  whom  little  is  left  to 
do.  This  doubtless  detracts  from  the  massed  effects  that  we  are  in 
the  habit  of  producing;  we  are  apt  to  think  that  this  kind  of  liberty 
is  only  disorder;  but  individual  efforts  are  more  energetic  and 
when  they  converge  toward  a  single  end,  by  spontaneous  choice  of 
each  will,  their  power  is  incalculable.  This  it  is  that  makes  the 
strength  of  America. 

An  interesting  and  satisfactory  summary.  There 
is,  however,  another  way  of  looking  at  it.  A  well- 
known  scientific  man  recently  expressed  to  me  his 
conviction  that  an  "American1'  association  of  any 
kind  is  destined  to  failure,  whether  it  be  of  scientif 
ic  men,  commercial  travellers  or  plumbers.  By 
"American'1  here  he  meant  continental  in  extent. 
There  may  thus  be,  according  to  this  view,  a  success 
ful  Maine  hotel-keeper's  association,  a  New  York  bar 
association,  or  a  Pennsylvania  academy  of  fine  arts, 
but  no  such  body  truly  representative  of  the  whole 
United  States.  Many  such  organizations  are  "Amer 
ican"  or  "National"  in  name  only;  for  instance,  the 
"American"  Academy  of  Sciences,  which  is  a  Boston 
institution,  or  the  "National"  Academy  of  Fine  Arts, 
which  belongs  to  New  York  City.  Many  bodies  have 
attempted  to  obviate  this  trouble  by  the  creation  of 
local  sections  in  different  parts  of  the  country,  and 
the  newly-formed  Society  of  Illuminating  Engineers 
has,  I  understand,  in  mind  the  organization  of  per 
fectly  co-ordinate  bodies  in  various  parts  of  the 
country,  without  any  attempt  to  create  a  central 
body  having  headquarters  at  a  definite  place.  This 
is  somewhat  as  if  the  American  Library  Association 
should  consist  of  the  federated  state  associations, 
perhaps  with  a  council  consisting  of  a  single  repre- 


58  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

sentative  from  each.     It  would  seem  to  be  a  work 
able  and  rather  attractive  plan.  We  may  remind  our 
selves  again    that    the  United    States    itself    is    the 
classic  example  of  an  American  association,  and  that 
it  has  been  fairly  successful  by  adopting  this  very 
system.    Our  recognition  of  the  necessity  of  local  di 
visions  in  our  own  association  and  of  close  affiliation 
with  the  various  state  bodies  is  shown  by  the  recent 
resolution  of  the    council    providing    for    sectional 
meetings  and  by  the  presence    at    this    and    several 
other  state  meetings  in  the  present  month  of  an  offi 
cial  representative  of  the  American  Library  Associa 
tion.     That  these,  or  similar  means  of  making  our 
national  body  continental  in   something  more  than 
name  are  necessary  we  may  freely  admit.     Possibly 
it  may  take  some  years  of  experimentation,  ending 
perhaps  in  appropriate  constitutional  revision,  to  hit 
upon  the  best  arrangement,     Too  much  centraliza 
tion  is  bad;  but  there  must  be  some  centralization. 
We  must  have  our  capital  and  our  legislative  and 
administrative  machinery,  as  the  United  States  has 
at  Washington.     For  legislative  purposes  our  Wash 
ington  is  a  shifting  one.     It  is  wherever  the  Associa 
tion  may  hold  its  annual  meeting  and  wherever  the 
Council  may  convene  in  the  interim.     For  such  ad 
ministrative  and    executive    purposes    as    require    a 
fixed  location,  our  Washington  is  for  the  present  in 
Boston.     Next  year  it  may  be  elsewhere;  but  wheth 
er  it  shall  remain  there  or  move  to  some  other  place 
would  seem  to    be    a    matter    of    small    importance. 
Wherever  it  may  be,  it  will  be  inaccessible  to  a  large 
majority  of  American  librarians.     If  immediate  ac 
cessibility  is  a  requisite,  therefore,  some  of  its  func 
tions  may  and  should  be  divided.    It  may  not  be  too 
much  to  look  forward  to  a  sectional  headquarters  in 
every  state  in  the  Union,  related  perhaps  to  the  gen- 


VALUE    OF    ASSOCIATION  59 

eral  headquarters  somewhat  as  branch  libraries  to 
a  central  library,  or,  perhaps,  carried  on  under  the 
auspices  of  the  state  associations.  At  any  rate,  it 
is  encouraging  to  reflect  that  we  are  not  insensible 
to  .the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  making  our  own,  or 
any  other  association  truly  American  in  scope,  and 
are  experimenting  toward  obviating  them. 

All  these  considerations  appear  to  me  to  lead  to 
one  conclusion — the  duty  of  every  librarian  to  be 
come  and  remain  a  member  of  the  American  Library 
Association.  I  do  not  desire  to  dwell  on  the  direct 
advantages  that  membership  offers — these  are  not 
few,  and  they  are  sufficiently  obvious.  Possibly  most 
of  those  who  are  likely  to  be  affected  by  them  are 
already  members  of  the  Association.  I  would  rec 
ommend  for  consideration  higher  grounds  than  these. 
Instead  of  asking  the  question,  "What  is  there  in  it 
for  me?"  I  should  inquire,  "What  is  there  in  it  for 
other  people?"  How  will  it  benefit  the  general  status 
of  library  work,  the  general  standing  of  librarians 
in  the  community,  the  influence  of  libraries  on 
those  who  use  or  ought  to  use  them — these  and  a 
hundred  other  elements  of  progress  that  are  closely 
bound  up  with  the  success  of  library  effort,  but  that 
may  not  add  to  the  welfare  of  any  one  individual. 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  answers  to 
these  questions  all  point  toward  increased  member 
ship.  As  we  have  chosen  to  work  along  the  broader 
lines  and  by  the  energy  of  mass  rather  than  that  of 
velocity — with  the  sledge-hammer  rather  than  the 
rifle  bullet — it  is  surely  our  duty  to  make  that  mass 
as  efficient  and  as  impressive  as  possible,  which 
means  that  it  must  be  swelled  to  the  largest  possible 
proportions.  Large  membership  may  be  efficient  in 
two  ways,  by  united  weight  and  by  pervasiveness. 
An  army  is  powerful  in  the  first  way.  Ten  thou- 


60  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

sand  men  concentrated  in  one  spot  may  strike  a 
sledge-hammer  blow  and  carry  all  before  them.  Yet 
the  same  ten  thousand  men  may  police  a  great  city 
without  even  seeing  one  another.  Scattered  about 
on  different  beats  they  are  everywhere.  Every  black 
or  two  one  meets  a  patrol  and  the  sense  of  security 
that  they  give  is  overwhelming.  It  is  in  this  way,  it 
seems  to  me,  that  large  membership  in  the  American 
Library  Association  may  be  effective.  We  meet  to 
gether  but  once  a  year,  and  even  then  we  do  not 
bring  out  our  full  force.  We  have  no  intention  of 
marching  on  Washington  en  masse  to  secure  legisla 
tion  or  even  of  forcing  our  trustees  to  raise  salaries 
by  a  general  library  strike.  But  if  we  can  make  it 
an  unusual  thing  for  a  librarian  not  to  be  a  member 
of  the  American  Library  Association ;  if  wherever 
one  goes  he  meets  our  members  and  recognizes  what 
they  stand  for,  then,  it  seems  to  me,  public  opinion 
of  librarians  and  librarianship  is  sure  to  rise.  Our 
two  savages,  who  band  together  for  a  few  moments 
to  lift  a  log,  become  by  that  act  of  association  marked 
men  among  their  fellows;  the  mere  fact  that  they 
have  intelligence  enough  to  work  together  for  any 
purpose  raises  them  above  the.  general  level.  It  is 
not  alone  that  increasing  numbers,  strength,  and  in 
fluence  make  for  the  glory  of  the  Association  itself; 
the  most  successful  bodies  of  this  kind  are  those  that 
exalt,  not  themselves  but  the  professions,  localities 
or  ideals  that  they  represent.  It  is  because  increas 
ing  our  numbers  and  scattering  our  membership 
throughout  the  land  will  increase  the  influence  of 
the  library  and  strengthen  the  hands  of  those  who 
work  in  it  that  I  believe  such  increase  a  worthy  ob 
ject  of  our  effort.  Associations  and  societies  come 
and  go,  form  and  disband;  they  are  no  more  immor 
tal  than  the  men  and  women  that  compose  them. 


VALUE    OF    ASSOCIATION  61 

Yet  an  association,  like  a  man,  should  seek  to  do  the 
work  that  lies  before  it  with  all  its  strength,  and  to 
keep  that  strength  at  its  maximum  of  efficiency.  So 
doing,  it  may  rest  content  that,  be  its  accomplish 
ment  large  or  small,  its  place  in  the  history  of  hu 
man  endeavor  is  worthy  and  secure. 


MODERN  EDUCATIONAL  METHODS 

% 

Those  who  complain  that  the  average  of  general 
education  has  been  lowered  are  both  right  and  wrong 
—right  literally  and  wrong  in  the  general  impres 
sion  that  they  give.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that 
among  young  persons  with  whom  an  educated  adult 
comes  intellectually  in  contact  the  average  of  cul 
ture  is  lower  than  it  was  twenty  years  ago.  This  is 
not,  however,  because  the  class  of  persons  who  were 
well  educated  then  are  to-day  less  well  trained,  but 
rather  because  the  class  has  been  recruited  from  the 
ignorant  classes,  by  the  addition  of  persons  who 
were  not  educated  at  all  then,  or  educated  very 
slightly,  and  who  are  now  receiving  a  higher,  though 
still  inadequate  degree  of  training.  In  other  words 
the  average  of  education  among  all  persons  in  the 
community  is  higher,  but  the  average  among  edu 
cated  persons  is  lower,  because  the  educated  class 
has  been  enlarged  by  the  addition  of  large  numbers 
of  slightly  educated  persons. 

This  phenomenon  is  common  to  all  stages  of  prog 
ress  in  all  sorts  of  things.  It  is  true,  for  instance, 
in  the  general  advance  of  the  world  in  civilization. 
The  average  degree  of  appreciation  of  art  among 
persons  who  know  anything  of  art  at  all  is  less,  for 
instance,  than  in  the  days  of  ancient  Greece,  be 
cause  the  class  of  art-lovers  throughout  the  world  is 
vastly  larger  and  includes  a  very  large  number  of 
persons  whose  appreciation  of  art  is  slight  and 
crude.  There  is,  nevertheless,  a  greater  total  amount 
of  love  for  art,  and  a  higher  average  of  art  educa 
tion,  taking  into  account  the  world's  entire  popula- 


64  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

tion,  than  there  was  then.  Let  us  state  the  case 
mathematically:  If,  of  one  thousand  persons,  ten 
have  a  hundred  dollars  each  and  the  rest  nothing,  a 
gift  of  five  dollars  each  to  five  hundred  others  will 
raise  the  average  amount  owned  by  each  of  the  thou 
sand,  but  will  greatly  lower  the  average  amount 
held  by  the  property  owners  in  the  group,  who  will 
now  number  510,  instead  of  ten. 

"How  do  you  demonstrate  all  this?"  will  prob 
ably  be  asked.  I  do  not  know  of  any  statistical  data 
that  will  enable  it  to  be  proved  directly,  but  it  is  cer 
tain  that  education  is  becoming  more  general,  which 
must  increase  the  number  of  partly  educated  per 
sons  having  an  imperfect  educational  background — 
a  lack  of  ancestral  training  and  home  influence. 
Thus,  among  the  persons  with  whom  the  educated 
adult  comes  in  contact,  he  necessarily  meets  a  larger 
number  of  individuals  than  formerly  who  betray 
lack  of  education  in  speech,  writing  or  taste;  and  he 
wrongly  concludes  that  the  schools  are  not  doing 
their  work  properly.  If  the  schools  were  not  doing 
their  work  properly,  we  should  have  direct  statis 
tical  evidence  of  it,  and  all  the  direct  evidence  I  have 
seen  goes  to  show  that  the  schools  are  accomplishing 
more  to-day  and  accomplishing  it  by  better  meth 
ods,  than  ever  before. 

Similarly,  I  believe  that  the  totality  of  teaching 
ability  in  the  profession  has  increased.  The  con 
spicuous  failures  are  persons  who  are  unfit  to  be 
teachers  and  who  have  been  drafted  into  service  be 
cause  of  our  sudden  increase  in  educational  plant. 
The  result  in  some  cases  has  been  a  curious  aberra 
tion  in  disciplinary  methods — a  freakishness  that  is 
inseparable  from  any  sudden  advance  such  as  we 
are  making. 


EDUCATIONAL    METHODS  65 

Our  schools  can  and  will  advance  much  further 
in  personnel,  methods  and  results;  but  they  are  by 
no  means  on  the  downward  path  now.  One  way  in 
which  they  may  do  better  work  is  by  greater  appre 
ciation  of  their  selective  as  well  as  their  training 
function. 

Suppose  we  have  twenty  bushels  of  raspberries 
and  the  same  quantity  of  potatoes  to  be  prepared  for 
food.  Our  present  educational  methods  are  a 
good  deal  like  those  of  a  cook  who  should  try  to 
make  the  whole  into  either  jam  or  Saratoga  chips, 
or  should  divide  the  lot  in  some  arbitrary  way  unre 
lated  to  their  fitness  for  one  or  the  other  operation. 
We  are  giving  in  our  educational  institutions  many 
degrees  and  many  kinds  of  training  without  proper 
selection-  of  the  persons  to  whom  the  training  is  to 
be  applied.  Selection  must  be  and  is  made,  of  course, 
but  it  is  made  on  arbitrary  lines,  or  for  reasons  un 
related  to  fitness.  One  boy's  education  lasts  ten 
years,  and  another's  two,  not  because  the  former  is 
fitted  to  profit  by  a  longer  period  of  training,  but  be 
cause  his  father  happens  to  have  money  and  inclina 
tion  to  give  it  to  him.  One  young  man  studies  medi 
cine  and  another  goes  into  business,  not  because 
these  are  the  careers  for  which  they  are  specially 
fitted,  but  because  one  thinks  that  the  prefix  "Doc 
tor"  would  look  well  in  front  of  his  name  and  the 
other  has  a  maternal  uncle  in  the  dry-goods  trade. 

I  am  not  so  foolish  as  to  think  that  selection  of 
this  kind  could  ever  be  made  with  unerring  accura 
cy,  but  I  do  assert  that  an  effort  should  be  made  to 
effect  it  in  a  greater  degree  through  our  regular  edu 
cational  institutions  and  to  leave  it  less  to  chance. 
Our  present  methods  are  like  those  of  wild  nature, 
which  scatters  seeds  broadcast  in  the  hope  that  some 


66  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

may  settle  on  favoring  soil,  rather  than  those  of  the 
skilled  cultivator,  who  sees  that  seed  and  soil  are 
fitted  for  each  other. 

In  this  and  other  particulars  I  look  for  great  im 
provement  in  our  educational  methods;  but  I  do  not 
think  that,  except  in  local  and  unessential  particu 
lars,  here  and  there,  they  are  now  retrograding. 


SOME  ECONOMIC  FEATUBES  OF  LIBRARIES* 

Of  the  three  great  divisions  of  economics — pro 
duction,  distribution  and  consumption — the  library 
has  to  do  chiefly  with  the  second,  and  it  is  as  a  dis 
tributor  of  literature  that  I  desire  to  speak  of  it,  al 
though  it  has  its  share  both  in  the  production  and 
consumption  of  books — more  briefly,  in  the  writing 
and  reading  of  them.  Much  writing  of  books  is  done 
wholly  in  libraries  and  by  their  aid,  and  much  read 
ing  is  done  therein.  These  functions  I  pass  by  with 
this  brief  notice. 

A  library  distributes  books.  So  does  a  booksel 
ler.  The  functions  of  these  two  distributors,  how 
ever,  should  differ  somewhat  as  do  those  of  the  two 
producers  of  books — the  author  and  the  publisher. 
The  author  creates  the  soul  of  the  book  and  the  pub 
lisher  gives  it  a  body.  The  former  produces  the  im 
material,  possibly  the  eternal,  part  and  the  latter 
merely  the  material^part.  Likewise,  in  our  distribu 
tion  we  librarians  should  lay  stress  upon  what  is  in 
the  book,  upon  the  production  of  the  author  rather 
than  on  that  of  the  publisher,  though  we  may  not 
neglect  the  latter.  We  are,  however,  eminently  dis 
tributors  of  ideas  rather  than  of  mere  merchandise, 
and  in  so  far  as  we  lay  stress  on  the  material  side 
of  the  book — important  as  this  is — and  neglect  what 
is  in  it,  we  are  but  traders  in  books  and  not  libra 
rians. 

Among  many  of  the  great  distributors  of  ideas— 
the  magazine,  the  newspaper,  the  school — it  is  be- 

*  Read  at  the  opening1  of  the  Chestnut  Hill  Branch,  Philadelphia 
Free  Library,  January  22,  1909. 


68  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

corning  increasingly  difficult  to  find  any  that  do  not 
feel  what  I  may  call  an  anti-civic  tendency.  They 
have  come  to  be  supported  largely  by  other  agencies 
than  the  public,  and  they  are  naturally  controlled 
by  those  agencies.  As  for  the  public,  it  has  become 
accustomed  to  paying  less  than  cost  for  what  it  gets 
along  these  lines,  and  is  thus  becoming  intellectually 
pauperized.  It  is  no  more  possible  to  distribute 
ideas  at  a  profit,  as  a  commercial  venture,  nowadays, 
than  it  would  have  been  to  run  a  circus,  with  an  ad 
mission  fee,  in  Imperial  Rome.  Thus  a  literary 
magazine  is  possible  only  because  it  is  owned  by 
some  publisher  who  uses  it  as  an  advertising  medi 
um.  He  can  afford  to  sell  it  to  the  public  for  less 
than  cost;  the  public  would  leave  a  publication  sold 
at  a  fair  profit  severely  alone,  hence  such  a  venture 
is  impossible.  A  scientific  magazine  in  like  manner 
must  have  some  one  to  back  it — a  firm  of  patent-of 
fice  brokers  or  a  scientific  society.  The  daily  papers 
depend  almost  wholly  on  their  advertisements;  the 
public  would  not  buy  a  simple  compilation  of  the 
day's  news  at  a  fair  profit.  Even  our  great  institu 
tions  of  higher  education  give  their  students  more 
than  the  latter  pay  for;  the  student  is  getting  part 
of  his  tuition  for  nothing.  A  college  that  depends 
wholly  on  tuition  fees  for  its  support  is  soon  left 
without  students.  Thus  all  these  disseminators  of 
ideas  are  not  dependent  on  the  persons  to  whom 
they  distribute  those  ideas,  for  whose  interest  it  is 
that  the  ideas  shall  be  good  and  true  and  selected 
with  discrimination.  They  depend  rather  for  sup 
port  on  outside  bodies  of  various  kinds  and  so  tend 
to  be  controlled  by  them — bodies  whose  interests  do 
not  necessarily  coincide  with  those  of  the  public. 
This  is  riot  true  of  material  tilings.  Their  distribu 
tors  still  strive  to  please  the  public,  for  it  is  by  the 


ECONOMIC    FEATURES  69 

public  that  they  are  supported.  If  the  public  wants 
raspberry  jam,  raspberry  jam  it  gets;  and  if,  being 
aroused,  it  demands  that  this  shall  be  made  out  of 
raspberries  instead  of  apples,  dock-seeds  and  aniline, 
it  ultimately  has  its  way.  But  if  the  department 
store  were  controlled  by  some  outside  agency,  benev 
olent  or  otherwise,  which  partly  supported  it  and 
enabled  it  to  sell  its  wares  below  cost,  then  if  this 
controlling  agency  willed  that  we  should  eat  dock- 
seeds  and  aniline — dock-seeds  and  aniline  we  should 
doubtless  eat. 

Not  that  the  controlling  powers  in  all  these  in 
stances  are  necessarily  malevolent.  The  publisher 
who  owns  a  literary  magazine  may  honestly  desire 
that  it  shall  be  fearlessly  impartial.  The  learned 
body  that  runs  a  scientific  periodical  may  be  willing 
to  admit  to  its  pages  a  defense  of  a  thesis  that  it  has 
condemned  in  one  of  its  meetings;  the  page-adver 
tiser  in  a  great  daily  may  be  able  to  see  his 
pet  policy  attacked  in  its  editorial  columns  without 
yielding  to  the  temptation  to  bring  pressure  to  bear; 
the  creator  of  an  endowed  university  may  view  with 
equanimity  an  attack  by  one  of  its  professors  on  the 
methods  by  which  he  amassed  his  wealth.  All  these 
things  may  be;  we  know  in  fact  that  they  have  been 
and  that  they  are.  But  unfortunately  we  all  know 
of  cases  where  the  effect  of  outside  control  has  been 
quite  the  contrary.  The  government  of  a  benevolent 
despot,  we  are  told,  would  be  ideal;  but  alas!  rules 
for  making  a  despot  benevolent  and  for  ensuring  that 
he  and  his  successors  shall  remain  so,  are  not  yet 
formulated.  We  have  fallen  back  on  the  plan  of 
fighting  off  the  despot — good  though  he  may  possibly 
be;  would  that  we  could  also  abolish  the  non-civic 
control  of  the  disseminators  of  ideas! 

Are  there,  then,  no  disseminators  of  ideas  free 


70  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

from  interference?  Yes,  thank  heaven,  there  are  at 
least  two — the  public  school  and  the  public  library. 
Of  these,  the  value  of  academic  freedom  to  the  public 
school  is  slight,  because  the  training  of  the  very 
young  is  of  its  nature  subject  little  to  the  influences 
of  which  we  have  spoken.  There  is  little  opportun 
ity,  during  a  grammar  school  or  high  school  course, 
to  influence  the  mind  in  favor  of  particular  govern 
ment  policies  and  particular  theories  in  science  or 
literature  or  art.  This  opportunity  comes  later. 
And  it  is  later  that  the  public  library  does  its  best 
work.  Supported  by  the  public  it  has  no  impulse 
and  no  desire  to  please  anyone  else.  No  suspicion  of 
outside  control  hangs  over  it.  It  receives  gifts;  but 
they  are  gifts  to  the  public,  held  by  the  public,  not 
by  outsiders.  It  is  tax-supported,  and  the  public 
pays  cost  price  for  what  it  gets — no  more  and  no 
less.  The  community  has  the  powrer  of  abolishing 
the  wrhole  system  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  The  li 
brary's  power  in  an  American  municipality  lies  in 
the  affections  of  those  who  use  and  profit  by  it.  It 
holds  its  position  by  love.  No  publisher  may  say  to 
it :  "Buy  my  books,  not  those  of  my  rival" ;  no  sci 
entist  may  forbid  it  to  give  his  opponent  a  hearing; 
no  religious  body  may  dictate  to  it;  no  commercial 
influence  may  throw  a  blight  over  it.  It  is  untram- 
meled. 

How  long  is  it  to  remain  thus?  That  is  for  its 
owners,  the  public,  to  say.  I  confess  that  I  feel  un 
easy  when  I  realize  how  little  the  influence  of  the 
public  library  is  understood  by  those  who  might  try 
to  wield  that  influence,  either  for  good  or  for  evil. 
Occasionally  an  individual  tries  to  use  it  sporadical 
ly — the  poet  who  tries  to  secure  undying  fame  by 
distributing  free  copies  of  his  verses  to  the  libraries, 
the  manufacturer  who  gives  us  an  advertisement  of 


ECONOMIC    FEATURES  71 

his  product  in  the  guise  of  a  book,  the  enthusiast 
who  runs  over  our  shelf  list  to  see  whether  the  li 
brary  is  well  stocked  with  works  on  his  fad — social 
ism  or  Swedenborgianism,  or  the  "new  thought." 
But,  so  far,  there  has  been  no  concerted,  systematic 
effort  on  the  part  of  classes  or  bodies  of  men  to  cap 
ture  the  public  library,  to  dictate  its  policy,  to  util 
ize  its  great  opportunities  for  influencing  the  public 
mind.  When  this  ever  comes,  as  it  may,  we  must 
look  out! 

So  far  as  my  observation  goes,  the*  situation — 
even  the  faintest  glimmering  of  it — is  far  from 
dawning  on  most  of  these  bodies.  Most  individuals, 
when  the  policy  of  the  library  suits  them  not,  ex 
haust  their  efforts  in  an  angry  kick  or  an  epistolary 
curse ;  they  never  even  think  of  trying  to  change  that 
policy,  even  by  argument.  Most  of  them  would  rath 
er  write  a  letter  to  a  newspaper,  complaining  of  a 
book's  absence,  than  to  ask  the  librarian  to  buy  it. 
Organizations— civil,  religious,  scientific,  political, 
artistic — have  usually  let  us  severely  alone,  where 
their  influence,  if  they  should  come  into  touch  with 
the  library,  would  surely  be  for  good — would  be  ex 
erted  along  the  line  of  morality,  of  more  careful 
book  selection,  of  judicial  mindedness  instead  of 
one-sidedness. 

Let  us  trust  that  influences  along  this  line — if 
we  are  to  have  influences  at  all — may  gain  a  foot 
hold  before  the  opposite  forces — those  of  sordid  com 
mercialism,  of  absurdities,  of  falsities,  of  all  kinds 
of  self-seeking — find  out  that  we  are  worth  their  ex 
ploitation. 

When  it  comes,  as  I  expect  it  will  some  day— 
this  general  realization  of  what  only  a  few  now  un 
derstand — that  the  public  library  is  worth  trying  to 
influence  and  to  exploit,  our  trouble  will  be  that  we 


72  LIBBABIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

shall  be  without  any  machinery  at  all  to  receive  it, 
to  take  care  of  it,  to  direct  the  good  into  proper 
channels  and  to  withstand  the  evil.  We  are  occa 
sionally  annoyed  and  disconcerted  now  by  the  infini 
tesimal  amount  of  it  that  we  see;  we  wish  people 
would  mind  their  own  business;  we  detest  meddlers; 
we  should  be  able  to  do  more  work  if  it  were  not  for 
the  bores — and  so  on.  But  what — what  in  heaven's 
name  shall  we  do  with  the  deluge  when  it  comes? 
With  what  dam  shall  we  withstand  it;  through  what 
sluices  shall  we  lead  it;  into  what  useful  turbines 
shall  we  direct  it?  These  things  are  wrorth  ponder 
ing. 

For  the  present  then,  this  independence  of  the  li 
brary  as  a  distributor  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  its 
chief  economic  advantages.  Another  is  its  power  as 
a  leveler,  and  hence  as  an  adjunct  of  democracy. 
Democracy  is  a  result,  not  a  cause,  of  equality.  It 
is  natural  in  a  community  whose  members  resemble 
each  other  in  ability,  modes  of  thought  and  mental 
development,  just  as  it  is  unthinkable  where  great 
natural  differences  racial  or  otherwise,  exist.  If  we 
wish  to  preserve  democracy,  therefore,  we  must  first 
maintain  our  community  on  something  like  a  level. 
Arid  we  must  level  it  up,  not  down;  for  although  a 
form  of  democracy  may  exist  temporarily  among  in 
dividuals  equally  ignorant  or  degraded,  the  advent  of 
a  single  person  more  advanced  in  the  scale  of  ability, 
quickly  transforms  it  into  absolutism.  Similar  in 
equalities  may  result  in  an  aristocratic  regime.  The 
reason  why  England,  with  its  ancient  aristocracy,  on 
the  whole,  is  so  democratic,  is  that  its  commoners 
are  constantly  recruited  by  the  younger  sons  of  its 
nobility,  so  that  the  whole  body  politic  is  continually 
stirred  and  kept  more  homogeneous  than  on  the  con 
tinent,  where  all  of  a  noble's  sons  and  daughter^  are 


ECONOMIC    FEATUKES  73 

themselves  noble.  This  stirring  or  levelling  process 
may  be  effected  in  many  ways  and  along  many  lines, 
but  in  no  way  better  than  by  popular  education,  as 
we  have  well  understood  in  this  country.  This  is 
why  our  educational  system  is  a  bulwark  of  our 
form  of  government,  and  this  is  why  the  public  li 
brary — the  only  continuous  feature  of  that  system, 
exercising  its  influence  from  earliest  childhood  to 
most  advanced  age — is  worth  to  the  community 
whatever  it  may  cost  in  its  most  improved  form. 
There  are  enough  influences  at  work  to  segregate 
classes  in  our  country,  and  they  come  to  us  ready- 
made  from  other  countries ;  we  may  be  thankful  that 
the  public  library  is  helping  to  make  Americans  of 
our  immigrants  and  to  make  uniformly  cultivated 
and  well-informed  Americans  of  us  all. 

Another  interesting  light  on  the  functions  of  the 
printed  page,  and  hence  of  the  library,  is  shown  by 
the  recent  biological  theory  that  connects  the  phen 
omena  of  heredity  with  those  of  habit  and  memory. 
The  inheritance  of  ancestral  characteristics,  accord 
ing  to  this  view,  may  be  described  as  racial  memory. 
To  illustrate,  we  may  take  an  interesting  study  of  a 
family  of  Danish  athletes,  recently  made  and  pub 
lished  in  France.  The  members  of  this  family,  adults 
and  children,  men  and  women,  have  all  been  gym 
nasts  for  over  three  hundred  years — no  one  of  them 
would  think  of  adopting  any  other  means  of  gaining 
a  livelihood.  It  seems  certain  to  the  scientific  men 
who  have  been  conducting  the  investigation,  that  not 
only  the  physical  ability  to  become  an  acrobat,  but 
also  the  mental  qualities  that  contribute  so  much  to 
success  in  this  occupation — pride  in  the  acrobatic 
pre-eminence  of  the  family,  courage,  love  of  ap 
plause,  and  so  on — have  been  handed  down  from  one 
generation  to  another,  and  that  it  has  cost  each  gen- 


74  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

eration  less  time  and  effort  to  acquire  its  skill  than 
ttem  its  predecessor.  In  other  words,  we  are  told, 
members  of  this  family  are  born  with  certain  pre 
dispositions — latent  ancestral  memories,  we  may 
say,  of  the  occupations  of  previous  generations.  To 
make  these  effective,  it  is  necessary  only  to  awaken 
them,  and  this  may  be  done  simply  by  the  sight  of 
other  persons  performing  gymnastic  feats.  These 
they  learn  in  weeks,  where  others,  without  such  an 
cestral  memories,  would  require  months  or  years. 

Evidently  this  may  be  applied  much  more  widely 
than  to  mere  physical  skill.  Few  of  us  can  boast  of 
gymnastic  ancestry,  but  all  of  us  have  inherited  pre 
dispositions  and  have  ancestral  memories  that  make 
it  easier  for  us  to  learn  certain  things  and  to  choose 
certain  courses  than  we  should  find  it  without  them. 
Some  of  these  are  good;  some  bad.  Some  are  use 
ful;  some  injurious.  It  is  necessary  only  to  awaken 
them  to  set  going  a  train  of  consequences;  if  not 
awakened,  they  may  remain  permanently  dormant. 
How  important,  therefore,  are  the  suggestions  that 
may  serve  as  such  awakeners;  how  necessary  to  bring 
forward  the  useful,  and  to  banish  the  injurious  ones! 

Now  of  all  possible  agencies  that  may  bring  these 
predispositions  into  play — that  may  awaken  our  an 
cestral  memories,  if  you  choose  to  adopt  this  theory 
—I  submit  that  the  book  stands  at  the  very  head. 
For  it  is  itself  a  racial  record;  it  may  contain,  in 
the  form  best  suited  to  awaken  our  predispositions, 
the  very  material  which,  long  ages  ago,  was  instru 
mental  in  handing  those  predispositions  down  to  us. 
It  is  in  tune  with  our  latent  memories,  and  it  may 
set  them  vibrating  more  vigorously  than  any  merely 
contemporary  agency. 

Does  this  not  place  in  a  new  and  interesting  light 
the  library  and  the  books  of  which  it  is  composed? 


ECONOMIC    FEATURES  75 

We  have  learned  to  respect  them  as  the  records  of 
the  race  and  to  recognize  their  value  as  teachers  and 
their  power  as  eriergizers;  in  addition  we  now  see 
that  they  may  act  as  fingers  on  invisible  mental  trig 
gers.  A  slight  impulse — altogether  trivial  compared 
with  its  effect — and  off  goes  the  gun.  The  discharge 
may  carry  a  line  to  a  wrecked  ship,  or  it  may  sink 
her  with  all  on  board. 

We  frequently  hear  it  said  of  some  book  whose 
tendency  is  bad:  "Well,  it  can't  hurt  me,  anyway; 
I'm  immune."  Are  you  quite  sure?  Have  you  gone 
quite  to  the  bottom  of  those  ancestral  memories  of 
yours,  and  are  you  certain  that  there  are  none  that 
such  a  book  may  rouse,  to  your  harm? 

On  the  other  hand,  does  this  not  explain  much 
that  has  always  interested  the  librarian;  for  in 
stance,  the  vast  popularity  of  fairy  tales,  especially 
those  that  date  back  to  our  racial  infancy?  I  need 
dwell  no  further  on  the  economic  importance  of  the 
book  as  viewed  from  this  standpoint. 

But  it  has  also  a  function  almost  diametrically 
opposed  to  that  which  we  have  just  considered;  be 
sides  harking  back  to  what  is  oldest  it  looks  forward 
to  what  is  newest.  It  may  stir  us  by  awakening  dim 
racial  recollections;  but  it  may  also  thrill  us  by  add 
ing  to  the  store  of  what  is  already  in  the  mind.  In 
fact,  we  like  to  assimilate  new  ideas,  to  think  new 
thoughts,  to  do  new  acts;  we  like  to  read  or  hear 
something  that  we  could  not  have  produced  our 
selves.  When  we  are  young  and  ignorant,  therefore, 
we  like  music  or  art  or  literature  that  appears  trivial 
to  us  as  we  grow  older  and  have  developed  our  own 
creative  powers.  A  poem  that  is  no  better  than  one 
a  man  might  dash  off  himself  he  likes  no  longer;  he 
prefers  to  be  confronted  with  something  that  is  above 
and  beyond  his  own  powers,  though  not  above  his 


76  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

comprehension.  Thus,  as  he  grows,  his  zone  of  en 
joyment  shifts  upward,  and  the  library  covers  the 
whole  moving  field.  When  Solomon  John  Peterkin, 
pen  in  hand,  sat  down  to  write  a  book,  he  discovered 
that  he  hadn't  anything  to  say.  Happy  lad !  He  had 
before  him  all  literature  as  a  field  of  enjoyment,  for 
all,  apparently,  was  beyond  his  creative  efforts. 

Do  those  of  you  who  are  musicians  remember 
when  you  first  apprehended  the  relations  between 
the  ionic  and  the  dominant  chords?  I  have  heard  a 
small  boy  at  a  piano  play  these  alternately  for  hours. 
Such  a  performance  is  torture  to  you  and  me;  it  is 
the  sweetest  harmony  to  him,  because  it  is  new  and 
has  just  come  into  his  sphere  of  creative  power. 
When  he  is  thoroughly  satisfied  that  he  can  produce 
the  effect  at  will,  he  abandons  it  for  something  new 
er  and  a  little  higher.  The  boy  who  discovers,  with 
out  being  told,  that  the  dominant  chord,  followed  by 
the  tonic,  produces  a  certain  musical  effect,  is  doing 
something  that  for  him  is  on  a  par  with  Wagner's 
searching  the  piano  for  those  marvellous  effects  of 
his  that  are  often  beyond  technical  explanation. 

The  child  who  reads  what  you  think  is  a  trivial 
book,  re-reads  it,  and  reads  others  like  it,  is  doing 
this  same  thing  in  the  domain  of  literature — he  is 
following  the  natural  course  that  will  bring  him  out 
at  the  top  after  a  while. 

When  we  distribute  books,  then,  we  distribute 
ideas,  not  only  actual,  but  potential.  A  book  has  in 
it  not  only  the  ideas  that  lie  on  its  surface,  but  mil 
lions  of  others  that  are  tied  to  these  by  invisible 
chords,  of  which  we  have  touched  on  but  a  few — the 
invisible  ancestral  memories  of  centuries  ago,  the 
foretastes  of  future  thoughts  in  our  older  selves  and 
our  posterity  of  centuries  hence.  When  we  think  of 
it,  it  is  hard  to  realize  that  a  book  has  not  a  soul. 


ECONOMIC    FEATUKES  77 

Gerald  Stanley  Lee,  in  his  latest  book,  a  collec 
tion  of  essays  on  millionaires,  sneers  at  the  efforts 
of  the  rich  mill  owners  to  improve  their  employees 
by  means  of  libraries.  Life  in  a  modern  mill,  he 
thinks,  is  so  mechanical  as  to  dull  all  the  higher  fac 
ulties.  "Andrew  Carnegie,"  he  says  (and  he  appar 
ently  uses  the  name  merely  as  that  of  a  type),  "has 
been  taking  men's  souls  away  and  giving  them  pa 
per  books." 

Now  the  mills  may  be  soul-deadening — possibly 
they  are,  though  it  is  hard  to  benumb  a  soul — but  I 
will  venture  to  say  that  for  every  soul  that  Mr.  Car 
negie,  or  anyone  else,  has  taken  away,  he  has  creat 
ed,  awakened  and  stimulated  a  thousand  by  contact 
with  that  almost  soul — that  near-soul — that  resides 
in  books.  Mr.  Lee's  books  may  be  merely  paper; 
mine  have  paper  and  ink  only  for  their  outer  garb; 
their  inner  warp  and  woof  is  of  the  texture  of  spirit. 

This  is  why  I  rejoice  when  a  new  library  is  opened. 
I  thank  God  for  its  generous  donor.  I  clasp  hands 
with  the  far-reaching  municipality  that  accepts  and 
supports  it.  I  wish  good  luck  to  the  librarians  who 
are  to  care  for  it  and  give  it  dynamic  force;  I  con 
gratulate  the  public  whose  privilege  it  is  to  use  it 
and  to  profit  by  it. 


SIMON  NEWCOMB:  AMERICA'S  FOREMOST 
ASTRONOMER 

Among  those  in  all  parts  of  the  world  whose 
good  opinion  is  worth  having,  Simon  Newcomb  was 
one  of  the  best  known  of  America's  great  men.  As 
tronomer,  mathematician,  economist,  novelist,  he  had 
well-nigh  boxed  the  compass  of  human  knowledge, 
attaining  eminence  such  as  is  given  to  few  to  reach, 
at  more  than  one  of  its  points.  His  fame  was  of  the 
far-reaching  kind, — penetrating  to  remote  regions, 
while  that  of  some  others  has  only  created  a  noisy 
disturbance  within  a  narrow  radius. 

Best  and  most  widely  known  as  an  astronomer, 
his  achievements  in  that  science  were  not  suited  for 
sensational  exploitation.  He  discovered  no  apple- 
orchards  on  the  moon,  neither  did  he  dispute  regard 
ing  the  railways  on  the  planet  Venus.  His  aim  was 
to  make  still  more  exact  our  knowledge  of  the  motions 
of  the  bodies  constituting  what  we  call  the  solar  sys 
tem,  and  his  labors  toward  this  end,  begun  more  than 
thirty  years  ago,  he  continued  almost  until  the  day 
of  his  death.  Conscious  that  his  span  of  life  was 
measured  by  months  and  in  the  grip  of  what  he 
knew  to  be  a  fatal  disease,  he  yet  exerted  himself 
with  all  his  remaining  energy  to  complete  his  monu 
mental  work  on  the  motion  of  the  moon,  and  suc 
ceeded  in  bringing  it  to  an  end  before  the  final  sum 
mons  came.  His  last  days  thus  had  in  them  a  cast 
of  the  heroic,  not  less  than  if,  as  the  commander  of 
a  torpedoed  battleship,  he  had  gone  down  with  her, 
or  than  if  he  had  fallen  charging  at  the  head  of  a 
forlorn  hope.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  that  such  a  man 


80  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

was  laid  to  rest  with  military  honors.  The  accident 
that  he  was  a  retired  professor  in  the  United  States 
Navy  may  have  been  the  immediate  cause  of  this, 
but  its  appropriateness  lies  deeper. 

Newcomb  saw  the  light  not  under  the  Stars  and 
Stripes,  but  in  Nova  Scotia,  where  he  was  born,  at 
the  town  of  Wallace  on  March  12,  1835.  His  father, 
a  teacher,  was  of  American  descent,  his  ancestors 
having  settled  in  Canada  in  1761.  After  studying 
with  his  father  and  teaching  for  some  little  time  in 
his  native  province  he  came  to  the  United  States 
while  yet  a  boy  of  eighteen,  and  while  teaching  in 
Maryland  in  1854-'56  was  so  fortunate  as  to  attract, 
by  his  mathematical  ability,  the  attention  of  two 
eminent  American  scientific  men,  Joseph  Henry  and 
Julius  Hilgard,  who  secured  him  an  appointment  as 
computer  on  the  Nautical  Almanac.  The  date  of 
this  was  1857,  and  Newcomb  had  thus,  at  his  death, 
been  in  Government  employ  for  fifty-two  years.  As 
the  work  of  the  almanac  was  then  carried  on  in  Cam 
bridge,  Mass.,  he  was  enabled  to  enter  the  Lawrence 
Scientific  School  of  Harvard  University,  where  he 
graduated  in  1858  and  where  he  pursued  graduate 
studies  for  three  years  longer.  On  their  completion 
in  1861  he  was  appointed  a  professor  of  mathematics 
in  the  United  States  Navy,  which  office  he  held  till 
his  death.  This  appointment,  made  when  he  was 
twenty-six  years  old, — scarcely  more  than  a  boy, — is 
a  striking  testimony  to  his  remarkable  ability  as  a 
mathematician,  for  of  practical  astronomy  he  still 
knew  little. 

One  of  his  first  duties  at  Washington  was  to  su 
pervise  the  construction  of  the  great  26-inch  equa 
torial  just  authorized  by  Congress  and  to  plan  for 
mounting  and  housing  it.  In  1877  he  became  senior 
professor  of  mathematics  in  the  navy,  and  from  that 


SIMON    NEWCOMB  81. 

time  until  his  retirement  as  a  Bear  Admiral  in  1897 
he  had  charge  of  the  Nautical  Almanac  office,  with 
its  large  corps  of  naval  and  civilian  assistants,  in 
Washington  and  elsewhere.  In  1884  he  also  assumed 
the  chair  of  mathematics  and  astronomy  in  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  Baltimore,  and  he  had  much  to 
to  do,  in  an  advisory  capacity,  with  the  equipment  of 
the  Lick  Observatory  and  with  testing  and  mount 
ing  its  great  telescope,  at  that  time  the  largest  in 
the  world. 

To  enumerate  his  degrees,  scientific  honors,  and 
medals  would  tire  the  reader.  Among  them  were  the 
degree  of  LL.D.  from  all  the  foremost  universities, 
the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal  Astronomical  Society  of 
London  in  1874,  the  great  gold  Huygens  medal  of 
the  University  of  Leyden,  awarded  only  once  in 
twenty  years,  in  1878,  and  the  Schubert  gold  medal 
of  the  Imperial  Academy  of  St.  Petersburg.  The 
collection  of  portraits  of  famous  astronomers  at  the 
Observatory  of  Pulkowa  contains  his  picture,  paint 
ed  by  order  of  the  Russian  Government  in  1887.  He 
was,  of  course,  a  member  of  many  scientific  socie 
ties,  at  home  and  abroad,  and  -was  elected  in  1869 
to  our  own  National  Academy  of  Sciences,  becoming 
its  vice-president  in  1883.  In  1893  he  was  chosen 
one  of  the  eight  foreign  associates  of  the  Institute 
of  France, — the  first  native  American  since  Benja 
min  Franklin  to  be  so  chosen.  Newcomb's  most  fam 
ous  work  as  an  astronomer, — that  which  gained  him 
world-wide  fame  among  his  brother  astronomers,— 
was,  as  has  been  said,  too  mathematical  and  techni 
cal  to  appeal  to  the  general  public  among  his  coun 
trymen,  who  have  had  to  take  his  greatness,  in  this 
regard,  on  trust.  They  have  known  him  at  first  hand 
chiefly  as  author  or  editor  of  popular  works  such 
as  his  "Popular  Astronomy"  (1877)  ;  of  his  text- 


82  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

books  on  astronomy,  algebra,  geometry,  trigonome 
try,  and  calculus;  of  his  books  on  political  economy, 
which  science  he  was  accustomed  to  call  his  "recrea 
tion";  and  of  magazine  articles  on  all  sorts  of  sub 
ject^  not  omitting  "psychical  research,"  which  was 
one  of  the  numerous  by-paths  into  which  he  strayed. 
He  held  at  one  time  the  presidency  of  the  American 
Society  for  Psychical  Research. 

The  technical  nature  of  his  work  in  mathematical 
astronomy, — his  "profession,"  as  he  called  it,  in  dis 
tinction  to  his  "recreations"  and  minor  scientific 
amusements, — may  be  seen  from  the  titles  of  one  or 
two  of  his  papers:  "On  the  Secular  Variations  and 
Mutual  Relations  of  the  Orbits  of  the  Asteroids" 
(1860) ;  "Investigation  of  the  Orbit  of  Neptune,  with 
General  Tables  of  Its  Motion"  (1867);  "Researches 
on  the  Motion  of  the  Moon"  (1876)  ;  and  so  on.  Of 
this  work  Professor  Newcomb  himself  says,  in  his 
"Reminiscences  of  an  Astronomer"  (Boston,  1903), 
that  it  all  tended  toward  one  result, — the  solution  of 
what  he  calls  "the  great  problem  of  exact  astron 
omy,"  the  theoretical  explanation  of  the  observed 
motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

If  the  universe  consisted  of  but  two  bodies, — say, 
the  sun  and  a  planet, — the  motion  would  be  simplic 
ity  itself;  the  planet  would  describe  an  exact  ellipse 
about  the  sun,  and  this  orbit  would  never  change  in 
form,  size,  or  position.  With  the  addition  of  only 
one  more  body,  the  problem  at  once  becomes  so  much 
more  difficult  as  to  be  practically  insoluble;  indeed, 
the  "problem  of  the  three  bodies"  lias  been  attacked 
by  astronomers  for  years  without  the  discovery  of 
any  general  formula  to  express  the  resulting  mo 
tions.  For  the  actually  existing  system  of  many 
planets  with  their  satellites  and  countless  asteroids, 
only  an  approximation  is  possible.  The  actual  mo- 


SIMON    NEWCOMB  83 

tions  as  observed  and  measured  from  year  to  year 
are  most  complex.  Can  these  be  completely  account 
ed  for  by  the  mutual  attractions  of  the  bodies,  ac 
cording  to  the  law  of  gravitation  as  enunciated  by 
Sir  Isaac  Newton?  In  Newcomb's  words,  "Does  any 
world  move  otherwise  than  as  it  is  attracted  by  other- 
worlds  ?"  Of  course,  Newcomb  has  not  been  the  only 
astronomer  at  work  on  this  problem,  but  it  has  been 
his  life-work  and  his  contributions  to  its  solution 
have  been  very  noteworthy. 

It  is  difficult  to  make  the  ordinary  reader  under 
stand  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  such  a  determina 
tion  as  this.  Its  tAVO  elements  are,  of  course,  the 
mapping  out  of  the  lines  in  which  the  bodies  con 
cerned  actually  do  move  and  the  calculations  of  the 
orbits  in  which  they  ought  to  move,  if  the  accepted 
laws  of  planetary  motion  are  true.  The  first  involves 
the  study  of  thousands  of  observations  made  during 
long  years  by  different  men  in  far  distant  lands,  the 
discussion  of  their  probable  errors,  and  their  reduc 
tion  to  a  common  standard.  The  latter  requires  the 
use  of  the  most  refined  methods  of  mathematical 
analysis;  it  is,  as  Newcomb  says,  "of  a  complexity 
beyond  the  powers  of  ordinary  conception."  In 
works  on  celestial  mechanics  a  single  formula  may 
fill  a  whole  chapter. 

This  problem  first  attracted  Newcomb's  attention 
when  a  young  man  at  Cambridge,  when  by  analysis 
of  the  motions  of  the  asteroids  he  showed  that  the 
orbits  of  these  minor  planets  had  not,  for  several 
hundred  thousand  years  past,  intersected  at  a  single 
point,  and  that  they  could  not,  therefore,  have  re 
sulted,  during  that  period,  from  the  explosion  of  a 
single  large  body,  as  had  been  supposed. 

Later,  when  Newcomb's  investigations  along  this 
line  had  extended  to  the  major  planets  and  their 


84  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

satellites,  a  curious  anomaly  in  the  moon's  motion 
made  it  necessary  for  him  to  look  for  possible  ob 
servations  made  long  before  those  hitherto  recorded. 
The  accepted  tables  were  based  on  observations  ex 
tending  back  as  far  as  1750,  but  Newconib,  by  search 
ing  the  archives  of  European  pbservatories,  succeed 
ed  in  discovering  data  taken  as  early  as  1660,  not,  of 
course,  with  such  an  investigation  as  this  in  view, 
but  chiefly  out  of  pure  scientific  curiosity.  The  re 
duction  of  such  observations,  especially  as  the  old 
French  astronomers  used  apparent  time,  which  was 
frequently  in  error  by  quarter  of  an  hour  or  so,  was 
a  matter  of  great  difficulty.  The  ancient  observer, 
having  no  idea  of  the  use  that  was  to  be  made  of  his 
work,  had  supplied  no  facilities  for  interpreting  it, 
and  "much  comparison  and  examination  was  neces 
sary  to  find  out  what  sort  of  an  instrument  was 
used,  how  the  observations  were  made,  and  how  they 
should  be  utilized  for  the  required  purpose."  The 
result  was  a  vastly  more  accurate  lunar  theory  than 
had  formerly  been  obtained. 

During  the  period  when  Newcomb  was  working 
among  the  old  papers  of  the  Paris  Observatory,  the 
city,  then  in  possession  of  the  Communists,  was  be 
set  by  the  national  forces,  and  his  studies  were  made 
within  hearing  of  the  heavy  siege  guns,  whose  flash 
he  could  even  see  by  glancing  through  his  window. 

Newcomb's  appointment  as  head  of  the  Nautical 
Almanac  office  greatly  facilitated  his  work  on  the 
various  phases  of  this  problem  of  planetary  motions. 
Their  solution  was  here  a  legitimate  part  of  the  rou 
tine  work  of  the  office,  and  he  had  the  aid  of  able 
assistants, — such  men  as  G.  W.  Hill,  who  worked 
out  a  large  part  of  the  theory  of  Jupiter  and  Saturn, 
and  Cleveland  Keith,  who  died  in  1896,  just  as  the 
final  results  of  his  work  were  being  combined.  In 


SIMON    NEWCOMB  85 

connection  with  this  work  Professor  Newcomb 
strongly  advocated  the  unification  of  the  world's 
time  by  the  adoption  of  an  international  meridian, 
and  also  international  agreement  upon  a  uniform 
system  of  data  for  all  computations  relating  to  the 
fixed  stars.  The  former  still  hangs  fire,  owing  to 
mistaken  "patriotism" ;  the  latter  was  adopted  at  an 
international  conference  held  in  Paris  in  1896,  but 
after  it  had  been  carried  into  effect  in  our  own  Nauti 
cal  Almanac,  professional  jealousies  brought  about 
a  modification  of  the  plan  that  relegated  the  im 
proved  and  modernized  data  to  an  appendix. 

Professor  Newrcomb's  retirement  from  active  ser 
vice  made  the  continuance  of  his  great  work  on  an 
adequate  scale  somewhat  problematical,  and  his  data 
on  the  moon's  motion  were  laid  aside  for  a  time  un 
til  a  grant  from  the  newly  organized  Carnegie  In 
stitution  in  1903  enabled  him  to  employ  the  neces 
sary  assistance,  and  the  work  has  since  gone  forward 
to  completion. 

What  is  the  value  of  such  work,  and  why  should 
fame  be  the  reward  of  him  who  pursues  it  success 
fully?  Professor  Newcomb  himself  raises  this  ques 
tion  in  his  "Reminiscences,"  and  without  attempting 
to  answer  it  directly  he  notes  that  every  civilized 
nation  supports  an  observatory  at  great  annual  ex 
pense  to  carry  on  such  research,  besides  which  many 
others  are  supported  by  private  or  corporate  con 
tributions.  Evidently  the  consensus  of  public  opin 
ion  must  be  that  the  results  are  worth  at  least  a  part 
of  what  they  cost.  The  question  is  included  in  the 
broader  one  of  the  value  of  all  research  in  pure  sci 
ence.  Speaking  generally,  the  object  of  this  is  solely 
to  add  to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge,  although  not 
seldom  some  application  to  man's  physical  needs 
springs  unexpectedly  from  the  resulting  discoveries, 


86  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

as  in  the  case  of  the  dynamo  or  that  of  wireless 
telegraphy.  Possibly  a  more  accurate  description  of 
the  moon's  motion  is  unlikely  to  bring  forth  any 
such  application,  but  those  who  applaud  the  achieve 
ments  of  our  experts  in  mathematical  astronomy 
would  be  quick  to  deny  that  their  fame  rests  on  any 
such  possibility. 

Passing  now  to  Professor  Newcomb's  "recrea 
tion,"  as  he  called  it, — political  economy,  we  may 
note  that  his  contributions  to  it  were  really  volum 
inous,  consisting  of  papers,  popular  articles  and  sev 
eral  books,  including  "The  A  B  C  of  Finance"  (1877) 
and  "Principles  of  Political  Economy"  (1886).  Au 
thorities  in  the  science  never  really  took  these  as 
seriously  as  they  deserved,  possibly  because  they  re 
garded  Professor  Newcomb  as  scarcely  orthodox. 
Some  of  his  distinctions,  however,  are  of  undoubted 
value  and  will  live;  for  instance,  that  between  the 
fund  and  the  flux  of  wealth,  on  which  he  insists  in 
his  treatises  on  finance.  As  to  Professor  Newcornb's 
single  excursion  into  fiction,  a  romance  entitled  "His 
Wisdom  the  Defender,"  it  is  perhaps  sufficient  to  say 
that,  like  everything  he  attempted,  it  is  at  least 
worth  notice.  It  is  a  sort  of  cross  between  Jules 
Verne  and  Bulwer  Lytton's  "Coming  Kace." 

Professor  Newcomb's  mind  was  comprehensive  in 
its  activity.  One  might  have  thought  that  an  intel 
lect  occupied  to  the  last  in  carrying  out  one  of  the 
most  stupendous  tasks  ever  attempted  by  a  mathe 
matical  astronomer  would  have  had  little  time  or  lit 
tle  energy  left  for  other  things;  but  Newcomb  took 
his  rest  and  pleasure  in  popular  articles  and  inter 
views.  Only  a  short  time  before  his  death  he  pub 
lished  an  essay  on  aeronautics  that  attracted  wide 
attention,  drawing  the  conclusions  that  the  aero 
plane  can  never  be  of  much  use  either  as  a  passenger- 
carrier  or  in  war,  but  that  the  dirigible  balloon  mav 


SIMON    NEWCOMB  87 

accomplish  something  within  certain  lines,  althougn 
it  will  never  put  the  railways  and  steamships  out  of 
business.  In  particular,  he  treated  with  unsparing 
ridicule  the  panic  fear  of  an  aerial  invasion  that  so 
lately  seized  upon  our  transatlantic  cousins. 

Personally,  Newcomb  was  an  agreeable  compan 
ion  and  a  faithful  friend.  His  success  was  due 
largely  to  his  tenacity  of  purpose.  The  writer's  only 
personal  contact  with  him  came  through  the  "Stand 
ard  Dictionary," — of  whose  definitions  in  physical 
science  Newcoinb  had  general  oversight.  On  one  oc 
casion  he  came  into  the  office  greatly  dissatisfied 
with  the  definition  that  we  had  framed  for  the  word 
"magnet." — a  conception  almost  impossible  to  de 
fine  in  any  logical  way.  We  had  simply  enumerated 
the  properties  of  the  thing, — a  course  which  in  the 
absence  of  authoritative  knowledge  of  their  causes 
was  the  only  rational  procedure.  But  Newcomb's 
mind  demanded  a  logical  treatment,  and  though  he 
must  have  seen  from  the  outset  that  this  was  a  for 
lorn  hope,  his  tenacity  of  purpose  kept  him,  pencil  in 
hand,  writing  and  erasing  alternately  for  an  hour  or 
more.  Finally  he  confessed  that  he  could  do  no  bet 
ter  than  the  following  pair  of  definitions, — "Magnet, 
a  body  capable  of  exerting  magnetic  force,"  and 
"Magnetic  Force,  the  force  exerted  by  a  magnet." 
With  a  hearty  laugh  at  this  beautiful  circulus  in 
definiendo  he  threw  down  his  pencil,  and  the  imper 
fect  and  illogical  office  definition  was  accepted. 

Logical  as  he  was,  however,  he  was  in  no  sense 
bound  by  convention.  His  economics,  as  has  been 
said,  was  often  unorthodox,  and  even  in  his  mathe 
matical  text-books  he  occasionally  shocked  the  hide 
bound.  I  well  remember  an  interesting  discussion 
among  members  of  the  Yale  mathematical  faculty 
just  after  the  appearance  of  Newcomb's  text-book  of 
geometry,  in  which  he  was  unsparingly  condemned 


88  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

by  some  because  lie  assumed  in  certain  elementary 
demonstrations  that  geometrical  figures  could  be  re 
moved  from  the  paper,  turned  over  and  laid  down 
again, — the  so-called  "method  of  superposition,"  now 
generally  regarded  as  quite  allowable.  Of  course,  a 
figure  can  be  treated  in  this  way  only  in  imagination 
and  for  this  season,  probably,  the  method  was  not 
employed  by  Euclid.  Its  use,  however,  leads  always 
to  true  results,  as  anyone  may  see;  and  it  was  quite 
characteristic  of  Professor  Newcomb  that  he  should 
have  taken  it  up,  not  having  the  fear  of  the  Greek 
geometers  before  him. 

Such  was  Newcomb;  it  will  be  long  before  Amer 
ican  science  sees  his  equal.  Mathematical  genius  is 
like  an  automobile, — it  is  looked  upon  in  two  oppos 
ing  fashions  as  one  has  it  or  has  it  not.  A  noted 
educator  not  long  ago  announced  his  belief  that  the 
possession  of  a  taste  for  mathematics  is  an  exact  in 
dex  of  the  general  intellectual  powers.  Not  much 
later,  another  eminent  teacher  asserted  that  mathe 
matical  ability  is  an  exotic, — that  one  may,  and  often 
does,  possess  it  who  is  in  other  respects  practically 
an  imbecile.  This  is  scarcely  a  subject  in  which  a 
single  illustration  decides,  but  surely  Newcomb' s 
career  justifies  the  former  opinion  rather  than  the 
latter;  the  amount  and  kind  of  his  mental  abilities 
along  all  lines  seemed  to  run  parallel  to  his  mathe 
matical  genius,  to  resemble  it  in  quantity  and  in 
kind. 

The  great  volumes  of  astronomical  tables  without 
which  no  astronomer  may  now  venture  upon  a  com 
putation  are  his  best  monument;  yet  the  general 
reader  will  longer  remember,  perhaps,  the  lucid  ex 
positor,  the  genial  essayist,  the  writer  of  one  of  the 
most  readable  autobiographies  of  our  day. 


THE  COMPANIONSHIP  OF  BOOKS  * 

Are  books  fitted  to  be  our  companions?  That  de 
pends.  You  and  I  read  them  with  pleasure;  others 
do  not  care  for  them;  to  some  the  reading  of  any 
book  at  all  is  as  impossible  as  the  perusal  of  a  vol 
ume  in  Old  Slavonic  would  be  to  most  of  us.  These 
people  simply  do  not  read  at  all.  To  a  suggestion 
that  he  supplement  his  usual  vacation  sports  by  read 
ing  a  novel,  a  New  York  police  captain — a  man  with 
a  common-school  education — replied,  "  Well,  I've 
never  read  a  book  yet,  and  I  don't  think  I'll  begin 
now."  Here  was  a  man  who  had  never  read  a  book, 
who  had  no  use  for  books,  and  who  could  get  along 
perfectly  well  without  them.  He  is  not  a  unique 
type.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  our  fellow  citizens 
might  as  well  be  quite  illiterate,  so  far  as  the  use 
that  they  make  of  their  ability  to  read  is  concerned. 
These  persons  are  not  all  uneducated;  they  possess 
and  are  still  acquiring  much  knowledge,  but  since 
leaving  school  they  have  acquired  it  chiefly  by  per 
sonal  experience  and  by  word  of  mouth.  Is  it  pos 
sible  that  they  are  right?  May  it  be  that  to  read 
books  is  unnecessary  and  superfluous? 

There  has  been  some  effort  of  late  to  depreciate 
the  book — to  insist  on  its  inadequacy  and  on  the  im- 
practicality  of  the  knowledge  that  it  conveys.  "Book- 
learning"  has  always  been  derided  more  or  less  by 
so-called  "practical  men".  A  recent  series  of  comic 
pictures  in  the  newspapers  makes  this  clear.  It  is 
about  "Book-taught  Bilkins".  Bilkins  tries  to  do 

*  Read  before  the  Pacific  Northwest  Library  Association,  June, 
1910. 


90  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

everything  by  a  book.  He  raises  vegetables,  builds 
furniture,  runs  a  chicken  farm,  all  by  the  directions 
contained  in  books,  and  meets  with  ignominious 
failure.  He  makes  himself,  in  fact,  very  ridiculous 
in  every  instance  and  thousands  of  readers  laugh  at 
him  and  his  absurd  books.  They  inwardly  resolve, 
doubtless,  that  they  will  be  practical  and  will  pay 
no  attention  to  books.  Are  they  right?  Is  the  in 
formation  contained  in  books  always  useless  and  ab 
surd,  while  that  obtained  by  experience  or  by  talk 
ing  to  one's  neighbor  is  always  correct  and  valuable? 

Many  of  our  foremost  educators  are  displeased 
with  the  book.  They  are  throwing  it  aside  for  the 
lecture,  for  laboratory  work,  for  personal  research 
and  experiment.  Does  this  mean  that  the  book,  as 
a  tool  of  the  teacher,  will  have  to  go? 

What  it  all  certainly  does  mean  is  that  we  ought 
to  pause  a  minute  and  think  about  the  book,  about 
what  it  does  and  what  it  can  not  do.  This  means 
that  we  ought  to  consider  a  little  the  whole  subject 
of  written  as  distinguished  from  spoken  language. 
Why  should  we  have  two  languages — as  we  practi 
cally  do — one  to  be  interpreted  by  the  ear  and  the 
other  by  the  eye?  Could  we  or  should  we  abandon 
either?  What  are  the  advantages  and  what  the  limi 
tations  of  each?  We  are  so  accustomed  to  looking 
upon  the  printed  page,  to  reading  newspapers,  books, 
and  advertisements,  to  sending  and  receiving  let 
ters,  written  or  typewritten,  that  we  are  apt  to  for 
get  that  all  this  is  not  part  of  the  natural  order,  ex 
cept  in  the  sense  that  all  inventions  and  creations  of 
the  human  brain  are  natural.  Written  language  is 
a  conscious  invention  of  man;  spoken  language  is  a 
development,  shaped  by  his  needs  and  controlled  by 
his  sense  of  what  is  fitting,  but  not  at  the  outset 
consciously  devised. 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  91 

We  are  apt  to  think  of  written  language  as  simply 
a  means  of  representing  spoken  language  to  the  eye; 
but  it  is  more  than  this ;  originally,  at  least  in  many 
cases,  it  was  not  this  at  all.  The  written  signs  rep 
resented  not  sounds,  but  ideas  themselves;  if  they 
were  intended  to  correspond  directly  with  anything, 
it  was  with  the  rude  gestures  that  signified  ideas 
and  had  nothing  to  do  with  their  vocal  expression. 
It  was  not  until  later  that  these  written  symbols 
came  to  correspond  to  vocal  sounds  and  even  to-day 
they  do  so  imperfectly;  languages  that  are  largely 
phonetic  are  the  exception.  The  result  is,  as  I  have 
said,  that  we  have  two  languages — a  spoken  and  a 
written.  What  we  call  reading  aloud  is  translation 
from  the  written  to  the  spoken  tongue;  Avhile  writ 
ing  from  dictation  is  translation  from  the  spoken  to 
the  written.  When  we  read,  as  we  say,  "to  our 
selves,"  we  sometimes,  if  we  are  not  skilful,  pro 
nounce  the  spoken  words  under  our  breath,  or  at 
least  form  them  with  our  vocal  organs.  You  all  re 
member  the  story  of  how  the  Irishman  who  could  not 
read  made  his  friend  stop  up  his  ears  while  reading 
a  letter  aloud,  so  that  he  might  not  hear  it.  This 
anecdote,  like  all  good  comic  stories,  has  something 
in  it  to  think  about.  The  skilful  reader  does  not 
even  imagine  the  spoken  words  as  he  goes.  He  for 
gets,  for  the  moment,  the  spoken  tongue  and  trans 
lates  the  written  words  and  phrases  directly  into  the 
ideas  for  which  they  stand.  A  skilful  reader  thus 
takes  in  the  meaning  of  a  phrase,  a  sentence,  even  of 
a  paragraph,  at  a  glance.  Likewise  the  writer  who 
sets  his  own  thoughts  down  on  paper  need  not  voice 
them,  even  in  imagination;  he  may  also  forget  all 
about  the  spoken  tongue  and  spread  his  ideas  on  the 
page  at  first  hand.  This  is  not  so  common  because 
one  writes  slower  than  he  speaks,  whereas  he  reads 


92  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

very  much  faster.  The  swift  reader  could  not  imag 
ine  that  he  was  speaking  the  words,  even  if  he  would ; 
the  pace  is  too  incredibly  fast. 

Our  written  tongue,  then,  has  come  to  be  some 
thing  of  a  language  by  itself.  In  some  countries  it 
has  grown  so  out  of  touch  with  the  spoken  tongue 
that  the  two  have  little  to  do  with  each  other.  Where 
only  the  learned  know  how  to  read  and  write,  the 
written  language  takes  on  a  learned  tinge;  the  popu 
lar  spoken  tongue  has  nothing  to  keep  it  steady  and 
changes  rapidly  and  unsystematically.  Where  near 
ly  all  who  speak  the  language  also  read  and  write  it, 
as  in  our  own  country,  the  written  tongue,  even  in 
its  highest  literary  forms,  is  apt  to  be  much  more 
familiar  and  colloquial,  but  at  the  same  time  the  writ 
ten  and  the  spoken  tongue  keep  closer  together.  Still, 
they  never  accurately  correspond.  When  a  man 
"talks  like  a  book/'  or  in  other  words,  uses  such  lan 
guage  that  it  could  be  printed  word  for  word  and  ap 
pear  in  good  literary  form,  we  recognize  that  he  is 
not  talking  ordinary  colloquial  English — not  using 
the  normal  spoken  language.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  the  speech  of  a  southern  negro  or  a  down-east 
Yankee  is  set  down  in  print,  as  it  so  often  is  in  the 
modern  "dialect  story,"  we  recognize  at  once  that  al 
though  for  the  occasion  this  is  written  language,  it 
is  not  normal  literary  English.  It  is  most  desirable 
that  the  two  forms  of  speech  shall  closely  corre 
spond,  for  then  the  written  speech  gets  life  from  the 
spoken  and  the  spoken  has  the  written  for  its  gov 
ernor  and  controller;  but  it  is  also  desirable  that 
each  should  retain  more  or  less  individuality,  and 
fortunately  it  is  almost  impossible  that  they  should 
not  do  so. 

We  must  not  forget,  therefore,  that  our  written 
speech  is  not  merely  a  way  of  setting  down  our 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  93 

spoken  speech  in  print.  This  is  exactly  what  our 
friends  the  spelling  reformers  appear  to  have  forgot 
ten.  The  name  that  they  have  given  to  what  they 
propose  to  do,  indicates  this  clearly.  When  a  word 
as  written  and  as  spoken  have  drifted  apart,  it  is 
usually  the  spoken  word  that  has  changed.  Reform, 
therefore,  would  be  accomplished  by  restoring  the 
old  spoken  form.  Instead  of  this,  it  is  proposed  to 
change  the  written  form.  In  other  words,  the  two 
languages  are  to  be  forced  together  by  altering  that 
one  of  them  that  is  by  its  essence  the  most  immut 
able.  Where  the  written  word  has  been  corrupted 
as  in  spelling  "guild"  for  "gild,"  the  adoption  of  the 
simpler  spelling  is  a  reform;  otherwise,  not. 

Now  is  the  possession  of  two  languages,  a  spoken 
and  a  written,  an  advantage  or  not?  With  regard  to 
the  spoken  tongue,  the  question  answers  itself.  If 
we  were  all  deaf  and  dumb,  we  could  still  live  and 
carry  on  business,  but  we  should  be  badly  handi 
capped.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  could  neither  read 
nor  write,  we  should  simply  be  in  the  position  of  our 
remote  forefathers  or  even  of  many  in  our  own  day 
and  our  own  land.  What  then  is  the  reasons  for  a 
separate  written  language,  beyond  the  variety  there 
by  secured,  by  the  use  of  two  senses,  hearing  and 
sight,  instead  of  only  one? 

Evidently  the  chief  reason  is  that  written  speech 
is  eminently  fitted  for  preservation.  Without  the 
transmittal  of  ideas  from  one  generation  to  another, 
intellectual  progress  is  impossible.  Such  transmit 
tal,  before  the  invention  of  writing,  was  effected  sole 
ly  by  memory.  The  father  spoke  to  the  son,  and  he, 
remembering  what  was  said,  told  it,  in  turn,  to  the 
grandson.  This  is  tradition,  sometimes  marvellous 
ly  accurate,  but  often  untrustworthy.  And  as  it  is 
without  check,  there  is  no  way  of  telling  whether  a 


91  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

given  fact,  so  transmitted,  is  or  is  not  handed  down 
faithfully.  Now  we  have  the  phonograph  for  pre 
serving  and  accurately  reproducing  spoken  lan 
guage.  If  this  had  been  invented  before  the  intro 
duction  of  written  language,  we  might  never  have 
had  the  latter;  as  it  is,  the  device  comes  on  the  field 
too  late  to  be  a  competitor  with  the  book  in  more 
than  a  very  limited  field.  For  preserving  particular 
voices,  such  as  those  of  great  men,  or  for  recording 
intonation  and  pronunciation,  it  fills  a  want  that 
writing  and  printing  could  never  supply. 

For  the  long  preservation  of  ideas  and  their  con 
veyance  to  a  human  mind,  written  speech  is  now  the 
indispensable  vehicle.  And,  as  has  been  said,  this  is 
how  man  makes  progress.  We  learn  in  two  ways : 
by  undergoing  and  reflecting  on  our  own  experiences 
and  by  reading  and  reflecting  on  those  of  others. 
Neither  of  these  ways  is  sufficient  in  itself.  A  child 
bound  hand  and  foot  and  confined  in  a  dark  room 
would  not  be  a  fit  subject  for  instruction,  but  neith 
er  would  he  reach  a  high  level  if  placed  on  a  desert 
island  far  from  his  kind  and  forced  to  rely  solely 
on  his  own  experiences.  The  experiences  of  our  fore 
bears,  read  in  the  light  of  our  own;  the  experiences 
of  our  forebears,  used  as  a  starting-point  from  which 
we  may  move  forward  to  fresh  fields — these  we  must 
know  and  appreciate  if  we  are  to  make  progress. 
This  means  the  book  and  its  use. 

Books  may  be  used  in  three  ways — for  informa 
tion,  for  recreation,  for  inspiration.  There  are  some 
who  feel  inclined  to  rely  implicitly  on  the  informa 
tion  that  is  to  be  found  in  books — to  believe  that  a 
book  can  not  lie.  This  is  an  unfortunate  state  of 
mind.  The  word  of  an  author  set  down  in  print  is 
worth  no  more  than  when  he  gives  it  to  us  in  spoken 
language — no  more  and  no  less.  There  was,  to  be 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  95 

sure,  a  time  when  the  printed  word  implied  at  least 
care  and  thoughtfulness.  It  is  still  true  that  the 
book  implies  somewhat  more  of  this  than  the  news 
paper,  but  the  difference  between  the  two  is  becom 
ing  unfortunately  less.  Now  a  wrong  record,  if  it 
purports  to  be  a  record  of  facts,  is  worse  than  none 
at  all.  The  man  who  desires  to  know  the  distance 
between  two  towns  in  Texas  and  is  unable  to  find  it 
in  any  book  of  reference  may  obtain  it  at  the  cost 
of  some  time  and  trouble;  but  if  he  finds  it  wrongly 
recorded,  he  accepts  the  result  and  goes  away  believ 
ing  a  lie.  If  we  are  to  use  books  for  information, 
therefore,  it  is  of  the  utmost  consequence  that  we 
know  whether  the  information  is  correct  or  not.  A 
general  critical  evaluation  of  all  literature,  even  on 
this  score  alone,  without  going  into  the  question  of 
literary  merit,  is  probably  beyond  the  possibilities, 
although  it  has  been  seriously  proposed.  Some  par 
tial  lists  we  have,  and  a  few  lists  of  those  lists,  so 
that  we  may  know  where  to  get  at  them.  There  are 
many  books  about  books,  especially  in  certain  depart 
ments  of  history,  technology,  or  art,  but  no  one  place 
to  which  a  man  may  go,  before  he  begins  to  read  his 
book,  to  find  out  whether  he  may  believe  what  he 
reads  in  it.  This  is  a  serious  lack,  especially  as  there 
is  more  than  one  point  of  view.  Books  that  are  of 
high  excellence  as  literature  may  not  be  at  all  accu 
rate.  How  shall  the  boy  who  hears  enthusiastic 
praise  of  Prescott's  histories  and  who  is  spellbound 
when  he  reads  them  know  that  the  results  of  recent 
investigation  prove  that  those  histories  give  a  totally 
incorrect  idea  of  Mexico  and  Peru?  How  is  the  fu 
ture  reader  of  Dr.  Cook's  interesting  account  of  the 
ascent  of  Mount  McKinley  to  know  that  it  has  been 
discredited?  And  how  is  he  to  know  whether  other 
interesting  and  well-written  histories  and  books  of 


96  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

travel  have  not  been  similarly  proved  inaccurate? 
At  present,  there  is  no  way  except  to  go  to  one  who 
knows  the  literature  of  the  subject,  or  to  read  as 
many  other  books  on  the  subject  as  can  be  obtained, 
weighing  one  against  the  other  and  coming  to  one's 
own  conclusions.  Possibly  the  public  library  may 
be  able  to  help.  Mr.  Charles  F.  Lummis  of  the  Los 
Angeles  library  advocates  labelling  books  with  what 
he  calls  "Poison  Labels"  to  warn  the  reader  when 
they  are  inaccurate  or  untrustworthy.  Most  libra 
rians  have  hesitated  a  little  to  take  so  radical  a  step 
as  this,  not  so  much  from  unwillingness  to  assume 
the  duty  of  warning  the  public,  as  from  a  feeling 
that  they  were  not  competent  to  undertake  the  crit 
ical  evaluation  of  the  whole  of  the  literature  of  spe 
cial  subjects.  The  librarian  may  know  that  this  or 
that  book  is  out  of  date  or  not  to  be  depended  on,  but 
there  are  others  about  which  he  is  not  certain  or  re 
garding  which  he  must  rely  on  what  others  tell  him. 
And  he  knows  that  expert  testimony  is  notoriously 
one-sided.  It  is  this  fear  of  acting  as  an  advocate 
instead  of  as  a  judge  that  has  generally  deterred  the 
librarian  from  labelling  his  books  with  notes  of  ad 
vice  or  warning. 

There  is,  however,  no  reason  why  the  librarian 
should  take  sides  in  the  matter.  He  may  simply 
point  out  to  the  reader  that  there  are  other  books  on 
the  same  subject,  written  from  different  points  of 
view,  and  he  may  direct  attention  to  these,  letting 
the  reader  draw  his  own  conclusions.  There  is  prob 
ability  that  the  public  library  in  the  future  will  fur 
nish  information  and  guidance  of  this  kind  about 
books,  more  than  it  has  done  in  the  past. 

And  here  it  may  be  noted  in  passing  that  the  li 
brary  is  coming  out  of  its  shell.  It  no  longer  holds 
itself  aloof,  taking  good  care  of  its  books  and  taking 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  97 

little  care  of  the  public  that  uses  them.  It  is  corning 
to  realize  that  the  man  and  the  book  are  complemen 
tary,  that  neither  is  much  without  the  other,  and 
that  to  bring  them  together  is  its  duty.  It  realizes 
also  that  a  book  is  valuable,  not  because  it  is  so  much 
paper  and  ink  and  thread  and  leather,  but  because 
it  records  and  preserves  somebody's  ideas.  It  is  the 
projection  of  a  human  mind  across  space  and  across 
time  and  where  it  touches  another  human  mind  those 
minds  have  come  into  contact  just  as  truly  and  with 
as  valuable  results  as  if  the  bodies  that  held  them 
stood  face  to  face  in  actual  converse.  This  is  the 
miracle  of  written  speech — a  miracle  renewed  daily 
in  millions  of  places  with  millions  of  readers. 

We  have,  in  the  modern  library,  the  very  best  way 
of  perpetuating  such  relations  as  this  and  of  ensur 
ing  that  such  as  are  preserved  shall  be  worth  pre 
serving.  When  the  ancients  desired  to  make  an  idea 
carry  as  far  as  possible,  they  saw  to  the  toughness 
and  strength  of  the  material  object  constituting  the 
record;  they  cut  it  in  stone  or  cast  it  in  metal,  for 
getting  that  all  matter  is  in  a  state  of  continual  flux 
and  change;  it  is  the  idea  only  that  endures.  Stone 
and  metal  will  both  one  day  pass  away  and  unless 
some  one  sees  fit  to  copy  the  inscription  on  a  fresh 
block  or  tablet,  the  record  will  be  lost.  It  is,  then, 
only  by  continual  renewal  of  its  material  basis  that 
a  record  in  written  language  can  be  made  to  last, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  this  renewal  should  not 
take  place  every  few  years,  as  well  as  every  few  cen 
turies.  There  is  even  an  advantage  in  frequent  re 
newal;  for  this  ensures  that  the  value  of  the  record 
shall  be  more  frequently  passed  upon  and  prevents 
the  preservation  of  records  that  are  not  worth  keep 
ing.  This  preservation  by  frequent  renewal  is  just 
what  is  taking  place  with  books;  we  make  them  of 


98  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

perishable  materials;  if  we  want  to  keep  them,  we 
reprint  them;  otherwise  they  decay  and  are  forgot 
ten. 

We  should  not  forget  that  by  this  plan  the  read 
er  is  usually  made  the  judge  of  whether  a  book  is 
worth  keeping.  Why  do  we  preserve  by  continual 
reprinting  Shakespeare  and  Scott  and  Tennyson  and 
Hawthorne?  The  reprinting  is  done  by  publishers 
as  a  money-making  scheme.  It  is  profitable  to  them 
because  there  is  a  demand  for  those  authors.  If  we 
cease  to  care  for  them  and  prefer  unworthy  writers, 
Shakespeare  and  Scott  will  decay  and  be  forgotten 
and  the  unworthy  ones  will  be  preserved.  Thus  a 
great  responsibility  is  thrown  upon  readers ;  so  far 
they  have  judged  pretty  well. 

Just  now,  however,  we  are  confining  ourselves  to 
the  use  of  books  for  information;  and  here  there  is 
less  preservation  than  elsewhere.  Especially  in  sci 
ence,  statements  and  facts  quickly  become  out  of 
date ;  here  it  is  not  the  old  but  the  new  that  we  want 
—the  new  based  on  the  accurate  and  enduring  part 
of  the  old. 

Before  we  leave  this  part  of  the  subject  it  may  be 
noted  that  many  persons  have  no  idea  of  the  kinds  of 
information  that  may  be  obtained  from  books.  Even 
those  who  would  unhesitatingly  seek  a  book  for  data 
in  history,  art,  or  mathematics  would  not  think  of 
going  to  books  for  facts  on  plumbing,  weaving,  or 
shoe-making,  for  methods  of  shop-window  decoration 
or  of  display-advertising,  for  special  forms  of  book 
keeping  suitable  for  factories  or  for  stock-farms— 
for  a  host  of  facts  relating  to  trades,  occupations, 
and  business  in  general.  Yet  there  are  books  about 
all  these  things — not  books  perhaps  to  read  for  an 
idle  hour,  but  books  full  of  meat  for  them  who  want 
just  this  kind  of  food.  If  Book-taught  Bilkins  fails, 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  99 

after  trying  to  utilize  what  such  books  have  taught 
him,  it  is  doubtless  because  he  has  previously  failed 
to  realize  that  books  plus  experience,  or,  to  put  it 
differently,  the  recorded  experience  of  others  plus 
our  own  is  better  than  either  could  be  separately. 
And  the  same  is  true  of  information  that  calls  for 
no  physical  action  to  supplement  it.  Books  plus 
thought — the  thoughts  of  others  plus  our  own — are 
more  effective  in  combination  than  either  could  be 
by  itself.  Beading  should  provoke  thought;  thought 
should  suggest  more  reading,  and  so  on,  until  others' 
thoughts  and  our  own  have  become  so  completely 
amalgamated  that  they  are  our  personal  intellectual 
possessions. 

But  we  may  not  read  for  information  at  all — rec 
reation  may  be  what  we  are  after.  Do  not  misunder 
stand  me.  Many  persons  have  an  idea  that  if  one 
reads  to  amuse  himself  he  must  necessarily  read 
novels.  I  think  most  highly  of  good  novels.  Narra 
tive  is  a  popular  form  of  literary  expression ;  it  is 
used  by  those  who  wish  to  instruct  as  well  as  to 
amuse.  One  may  obtain  plenty  of  information  from 
novels — often  in  a  form  nowhere  else  available.  If 
we  want  exact  statement,  statistical  or  otherwise,  we 
do  not  go  to  fiction  for  it;  but  if  we  wish  to  obtain 
what  is  often  more  important — accurate  and  lasting 
general  impressions  of  history,  society,  or  geography, 
the  novel  is  often  the  only  place  where  these  may  be 
had.  Likewise,  one  may  amuse  himself  with  history, 
travel,  science,  or  art — even  with  mathematics.  The 
last  is  rarely  written  primarily  to  amuse,  although 
we  have  such  a  title  as  "Mathematical  recreations/' 
but  there  are  plenty  of  non-fiction  books  written  for 
entertainment  and  one  may  read  for  entertainment 
any  book  whatever.  The  result  depends  not  so  much 
on  the  book  or  its  contents  as  on  the  reader. 


100  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Recreation  is  now  recognized  as  an  essential  part 
of  education.  And  just  as  physical  recreation  con 
sists  largely  in  the  same  muscular  movements  that 
constitute  work,  only  in  different  combinations  and 
with  different  ends  in  view,  so  mental  recreation  con 
sists  of  intellectual  exercise  with  a  similar  variation 
of  combinations  and  aims. 

Somebody  says  that  "play  is  work  that  you  don't 
have  to  do".  So  reading  for  amusement  may  closely 
resemble  study — the  only  difference  is  that  it  is  pure 
ly  voluntary.  Here  again,  however,  the  written  lan 
guage  is  only  an  intermediary;  we  have  as  before, 
the  contact  of  two  minds — only  here  it  is  often  the 
lighter  contact  of  good-fellowship.  And  one  who 
reads  always  for  such  recreation  is  thus  like  the  man 
who  is  always  bandying  trivialities,  story-telling, 
and  jesting — an  excellent,  even  a  necessary,  way  of 
passing  part  of  one's  time,  but  a  mistaken  way  of 
employing  all  of  it. 

The  best  kind  of  recreation  is  gently  stimulating, 
but  stimulation  may  rise  easily  to  abnormality. 
There  are  fiction  drunkards  just  as  there  are  persons 
who  take  too  much  alcohol  or  too  much  coffee.  In 
fact,  if  one  is  so  much  absorbed  by  the  ideas  that  he 
is  assimilating  that  the  process  interferes  with  the 
ordinary  duties  of  life,  he  may  be  fairly  sure  that  it 
is  injuring  him.  If  one  loves  coffee  or  alcohol,  or 
even  candy,  so  dearly  that  one  can  not  give  it  up,  it 
is  time  to  stop  using  it  altogether.  If  a  reader  is  so 
fond  of  an  exciting  story  that  he  can  not  lay  it  aside, 
so  that  he  sits  up  late  at  night  reading  it,  or  if  he 
can  not  drop  it  from  his  mind  when  he  does  lay  it 
aside,  but  goes  on  thinking  about  the  deadly  combat 
between  the  hero  and  Lord  William  Fitz  Grouchy 
when  he  ought  to  be  studying  his  lessons  or  attend 
ing  to  his  business,  it  is  time  to  cut  out  fiction  al 
together.  This  advice  has  absolutely  nothing  to  do 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  101 

with  the  quality  of  the  fiction.  It  will  not  do  simply 
to  wrarn  the  habitual  drunkard  that  he  must  be  care 
ful  to  take  none  but  the  best  brands;  he  must  drop 
alcohol  altogether.  If  you  are  a  fiction  drunkard, 
enhanced  quality  will  only  enslave  you  further.  This 
sort  of  use  is  no  more  recreation  in  the  proper  sense 
of  the  wrord  than  is  gambling,  or  drinking  to  excess, 
or  smoking  opium. 

And  now  we  come  to  a  use  of  books  that  is  more 
important — lies  more  at  the  root  of  things — than 
their  use  for  either  information  or  recreation — their 
use  for  inspiration.  One  may  get  help  and  inspira 
tion  along  with  the  other  two — reading  about  how 
to  make  a  box  may  inspire  a  boy  to  go  out  and  make 
one  himself.  It  is  this  kind  of  thing  that  should  be 
the  final  outcome  of  every  mental  process.  Nothing 
that  goes  on  in  the  brain  is  really  complete  until  it 
ends  in  a  motor  stimulus.  The  action,  it  is  true,  may 
not  follow  closely;  it  may  be  the  result  of  years  of 
mental  adjustment;  it  may  even  take  place  in  an 
other  body  from  the  one  where  it  originated.  The 
man  who  tells  us  how  to  make  a  box,  and  tells  it  so 
fascinatingly  that  he  sets  all  his  readers  to  box-mak 
ing,  presumably  has  made  boxes  with  his  own  hands, 
but  there  may  be  those  who  are  fitted  to  inspire  ac 
tion  in  others  rather  than  to  undertake  it  themselves. 
And  the  larger  literature  of  inspiration  is  not  that 
which  urges  to  specific  deeds  like  box-making,  or 
even  to  classes  of  deeds,  like  caring  for  the  sick  or 
improving  methods  of  transportation;  rather  does  it 
include  in  its  scope  all  good  thoughts  and  all  good 
actions.  It  makes  better  men  and  women  of  those 
who  read  it;  it  is  revolutionary  and  evolutionary  at 
the  same  time,  in  the  best  sense  of  both  words. 

What  will  thus  inspire  me,  do  you  ask?  It  would 
be  easy  to  try  to  tell  you;  it  would  also  be  easy  to 
fail.  Many  have  tried  and  failed.  This  is  a  deeply 


102  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

personal  matter.  I  can  not  tell  what  book,  or  what 
passage  in  a  book,  will  touch  the  magic  spring  that 
shall  make  your  life  useful  instead  of  useless,  that 
shall  start  your  thoughts  and  your  deeds  climbing 
up  instead  of  grovelling  or  passively  waiting.  Only 
search  will  reveal  it.  The  diamond-miner  who  ex 
pects  to  be  directed  to  the  precise  spot  where  he  will 
find  a  gem  will  never  pick  one  up.  Only  he  who  seeks, 
finds.  There  are,  however,  places  to  look  and  places 
to  avoid.  The  peculiar  clay  in  which  diamonds  oc 
cur  is  well  known  to  mineralogists.  He  who  runs 
across  it,  looks  for  diamonds,  though  he  may  find 
none.  But  he  who  hunts  for  them  on  the  rock-ribbed 
hills  of  New  Hampshire  or  the  sea-sands  of  Florida 
is  doing  a  foolish  thing — although  even  there  he  may 
conceivably  pick  up  one  that  has  been  dropped  by 
accident. 

So  you  may  know  where  it  is  best  to  go  in  your 
search  for  inspiration  from  books,  for  we  know 
where  seekers  in  the  past  have  most  often  found  it. 
He  who  could  read  the  Bible  or  Shakespeare  without 
finding  some  of  it  is  the  exception.  It  may  be  looked 
for  in  the  great  poets — Homer,  Virgil,  Dante,  Chau 
cer,  Milton,  Hugo,  Keats,  Goethe;  or  the  great  his 
torians — Tacitus,  Herodotus,  Froissart,  Macaulny, 
Taine,  Bancroft;  or  in  the  great  travellers  from  Sir 
John  Mandeville  down,  or  in  biographies  like  Bos- 
well's  life  of  Johnson,  or  in  books  of  science — La 
place,  Lagrange,  Darwin,  Tyndall,  Helmholtz;  in  the 
lives  of  the  great  artists;  in  the  great  novels  and 
romances — Thackeray,  Balzac,  Hawthorne,  Dickens, 
George  Eliot.  Yet  each  and  all  of  these  may  leave 
you  cold  and  may  pick  up  your  gem  in  some  out-of- 
the-way  corner  where  neither  you  nor  anyone  else 
would  think  of  looking  for  it. 

Did  you  ever  see  a  car-conductor  fumbling  about 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  103 

in  the  dark  with  the  trolley  pole,  trying  to  hit  the 
wire?  While  he  is  pulling  it  down  and  letting  it 
fly  up  again,  making  fruitless  dabs  in  the  air,  the  car 
is  dark  and  motionless;  in  vain  the  motorman  turns 
his  controller,  in  vain  do  the  passengers  long  for 
light.  But  sooner  or  later  the  pole  strikes  the  wire; 
down  it  flows  the  current  that  was  there  all  the  time 
up  in  the  air;  in  a  jiffy  the  car  is  in  motion  and 
ablaze  with  light.  So  your  search  for  inspiration  in 
literature  may  be  long  and  unsuccessful;  you  are 
dark  and  motionless.  But  the  life-giving  current 
from  some  great  man's  brain  is  flowing  through 
some  book  not  far  away.  One  day  you  will  make 
the  connection  and  your  life  will  in  a  trice  be  filled 
with  light  and  instinct  with  action. 

And  before  we  leave  this  subject  of  inspiration, 
let  us  dwell  for  a  moment  on  that  to  be  obtained 
from  one's  literary  setting  in  general — from  the  to 
tality  of  one's  literary  associations  and  impressions, 
as  distinguished  from  that  gained  from  some  specific 
passage  or  idea. 

It  has  been  said  that  it  takes  two  to  tell  the  truth ; 
one  to  speak  and  one  to  listen.  In  like  manner  we 
may  say  that  two  persons  are  necessary  to  a  great 
artistic  interpretation — one  to  create  and  one  to  ap 
preciate.  And  of  no  art  is  this  more  true  than  it  is 
of  literature.  The  thought  that  we  are  thus  coop 
erating  with  Shakespeare  and  Schiller  and  Hugo  in 
bringing  out  the  full  effect  of  their  deathless  con 
ceptions  is  an  inspiring  one  and  its  consideration 
may  aid  us  in  realizing  the  essential  oneness  of  the 
human  race,  so  far  as  its  intellectual  life  is  con 
cerned  . 

Would  you  rather  be  a  citizen  of  the  United 
States  than,  we  will  say,  of  Nicaragua?  You  might 
be  as  happy,  as  well  educated,  as  well  off,  there  as 


104  LIBKABIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

here.  Why  do  you  prefer  your  present  status?  Sim 
ply  and  solely  because  of  associations  and  relation 
ships.  If  this  is  sentiment,  as  it  doubtless  is,  it  is 
the  kind  of  sentiment  that  rules  the  world — it  is  in 
the  same  class  as  friendship,  loyalty,  love  of  kin,  af 
fection  for  home.  The  links  that  bind  us  to  the  past 
and  the  threads  that  stretch  out  into  the  future  are 
more  satisfactory  to  us  here  in  the  United  States, 
with  the  complexity  of  its  interests  for  us,  than  they 
would  be  in  Nicaragua,  or  Guam,  or  Iceland. 

Then  of  what  country  in  the  realm  of  literature 
do  you  desire  to  be  a  citizen?  Of  the  one  where 
Shakespeare  is  king  and  where  your  familiar  and 
daily  speech  is  with  the  great  ones  of  this  earth— 
those  whose  wise,  witty,  good,  or  inspiring  words, 
spoken  for  centuries  past,  have  been  recorded  in 
books?  Or  would  you  prefer  to  dwell  with  triviality 
and  banality — perhaps  with  Laura  Jean  Libbey  or 
even  with  Mary  J.  Holmes,  and  those  a  little  better 
than  these — or  a  little  worse. 

I  am  one  of  those  who  believe  in  the  best  associa 
tions,  literary  as  well  as  social.  And  associations 
may  have  their  effect  even  if  they  are  apparently 
trivial  or  superficial. 

When  the  open-shelf  library  was  first  introduced 
we  were  told  that  one  of  its  chief  advantages  was 
that  it  encouraged  "browsing" — the  somewhat  aim 
less  rambling  about  and  dipping  here  and  there  into 
a  book.  Obviously  this  can  not  be  done  in  a  closed- 
shelf  library.  But  of  late  it  has  been  suggested,  in 
one  quarter  or  another,  that  although  this  may  be  a 
pleasant  occupation  to  some,  or  even  to  most,  it  is 
not  a  profitable  one.  Opponents  of  the  open  shelf 
of  whom  there  are  still  one  or  two,  here  and  there, 
find  in  this  conclusion  a  reason  for  negativing  the 
argument  in  its  favor,  while  those  of  its  advocates 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  105 

who  accept  this  view  see  in  it  only  a  reason  for  bas 
ing  that  argument  wholly  on  other  grounds. 

Now  those  of  us  who  like  a  thing  do  not  relish 
being  told  that  it  is  not  good  for  us.  We  feel  that 
pleasure  was  intended  as  an  outward  sign  of  benefits 
received  and  although  it  may  in  abnormal  conditions 
deceive  us,  we  are  right  in  demanding  proof  before 
distrusting  its  indications.  When  the  cow  absorbs 
physical  nutriment  by  browsing,  she  does  so  without 
further  reason  than  that  she  likes  it.  Does  the  ab 
sorber  of  mental  pabulum  from  books  argue  wrong 
ly  from  similar  premises? 

Many  things  are  hastily  and  wrongly  condemned 
because  they  do  not  achieve  certain  results  that  they 
were  not  intended  to  achieve.  And  in  particular,  when 
a  thing  exists  in  several  degrees  or  grades,  some  one 
of  those  grades  is  often  censured,  although  good  in 
itself,  because  it  is  not  a  grade  or  two  higher.  Obvi 
ously  everything  depends  on  what  is  required.  When 
a  shopper  wants  just  three  yards  of  cloth,  she  would 
be  foolish  to  buy  four.  She  would,  of  course,  be  even 
more  foolish  to  imagine  that,  if  she  really  wished 
four,  three  would  do  just  as  well.  But  if  a  man 
wants  to  go  to  the  eighth  story  of  a  building,  he 
should  not  be  condemned  because  he  does  not  mount 
to  the  ninth ;  if  he  wishes  a  light  lunch,  he  should  not 
be  found  fault  with  for  not  ordering  a  seven-course 
dinner.  And  yet  we  continually  hear  persons  ac 
cused  of  "superficiality''  who  purposely  and  know 
ingly  acquire  some  slight  degree  of  knowledge  of  a 
subject  instead  of  a  higher  degree.  And  others  are 
condemned,  we  will  say,  for  reading  for  amusement 
when  they  might  have  read  for  serious  information, 
without  inquiring  whether  amusement,  in  this  in 
stance,  was  not  precisely  what  they  needed. 

It  may  be,  therefore,  that  browsing  is  productive 


106  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

of  some  good  result,  and  that  it  fails  to  effect  some 
other,  perhaps  some  higher,  result  which  its  critics 
have  wrongly  fixed  upon  as  the  one  desirable  thing 
in  this  connection. 

When  a  name  embodies  a  figure  of  speech,  we 
may  often  learn  something  by  following  up  the  fig 
ure  to  see  how  far  it  holds  good.  What  does  an  ani 
mal  do,  and  what  does  it  not  do,  when  it  "browses'-? 
In  the  first  place  it  eats  food — fresh,  growing  food; 
but,  secondly,  it  eats  this  food  by  cropping  off  the 
tips  of  the  herbage,  not  taking  much  at  once,  and 
again,  it  moves  about  from  place  to  place,  eating 
now  here  and  now  there  and  then  making  selection, 
from  one  motive  or  another,  but  presumably  follow 
ing  the  dictates  of  its  own  taste  or  fancy.  What  does 
it  not  do?  First,  it  does  not,  from  choice,  eat  any 
thing  bad.  Secondly,  it  does  not  necessarily  con 
sume  all  of  its  food  in  this  way.  If  it  finds  a  par 
ticularly  choice  spot,  it  may  confine  its  feeding  to 
that  spot;  or,  if  its  owner  sees  fit,  he  may  remove  it 
to  the  stable,  where  it  may  stand  all  day  and  eat 
what  he  chooses  to  give  it.  The  benefits  of  browsing 
are,  first,  the  nourishment  actually  derived  from  the 
food  taken,  coupled  with  the  fact  that  it  is  taken  in 
small  quantities,  and  in  great  variety;  and  secondly, 
the  knowledge  of  good  spots,  obtained  from  the  test 
ing  of  one  spot  after  another,  throughout  the  whole 
broad  pasture. 

Now  I  submit  that  our  figure  of  speech  holds 
good  in  all  these  particulars.  The  literary  "browser" 
partakes  of  his  mental  food  from  books  and  is  there 
by  nourished  and  stimulated;  he  takes  it  here  and 
there  in  brief  quantities,  moving  from  section  to  sec 
tion  and  from  shelf  to  shelf,  selecting  choice  morsels 
of  literature  as  fancy  may  dictate.  He  does  not,  if 
he  is  a  healthy  reader,  absorb  voluntarily  anything 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  107 

that  will  hurt  him,  and  this  method  of  literary  ab 
sorption  does  not  preclude  other  methods  of  mental 
nourishment.  He  may  like  a  book  so  much  that  he 
proceeds  to  devour  it  whole,  or  his  superiors  in 
knowledge  may  remove  him  to  a  place  where  neces 
sary  mental  food  is  administered  more  or  less  forci 
bly.  And  having  gone  so  far  with  our  comparison,  we 
shall  make  no  mistake  if  we  go  a  little  further  and 
say  that  the  benefits  of  browsing  to  the  reader  are 
twofold,  as  they  are  to  the  material  feeder — the  ab 
sorption  of  actual  nutriment  in  his  own  wilful,  way 
ward  manner — a  little  at  a  time  and  in  great  variety ; 
and  the  knowledge  of  good  reading  obtained  from 
such  a  wide  testing  of  the  field. 

Are  not  these  real  benefits,  and  are  they  not  de 
sirable?  I  fear  that  our  original  surmise  was  cor 
rect  and  that  browsing  is  condemned  not  for  what 
it  does,  but  because  it  fails  to  do  something  that  it 
could  not  be  expected  to  do.  Of  course,  if  one  were 
to  browse  continuously  he  would  be  unable  to  feed  in 
any  other  way.  Attendance  upon  school  or  the  con 
tinuous  reading  of  any  book  whatever  would  be  ob 
viously  impossible.  To  avoid  misunderstanding, 
therefore,  we  will  agree  at  this  point  that  whatever 
may  be  said  here  in  commendation  of  browsing  is  on 
condition  that  it  be  occasional  and  not  excessive  and 
that  the  normal  amount  of  continuous  reading  and 
study  proceed  together  with  it. 

Having  settled,  therefore,  that  browsing  is  a 
good  thing  when  one  does  not  occupy  ones'  whole 
time  with  it,  let  us  examine  its  advantages  a  little 
more  in  detail. 

First:  about  the  mental  nourishment  that  is  ab 
sorbed  in  browsing;  the  specific  information,  the  ap 
preciation  of  what  is  good,  the  intellectual  stimula 
tion — not  that  which  comes  from  rear] ing  suggested 


108  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

or  guided  by  browsing,  but  from  the  actual  process  it 
self.  I  have  heard  it  strenuously  denied  that  any 
such  absorption  occurs;  the  bits  taken  are  too  small, 
the  motion  of  the  browser  is  too  rapid,  the  whole 
process  is  too  desultory.  Let  us  see.  In  the  first  place 
a  knowledge  of  authors  and  titles  and  of  the  general 
character  of  their  works  is  by  no  means  to  be  de 
spised.  I  heard  the  other  day  of  a  presumably  edu 
cated  woman  who  betrayed  in  a  conversation  her  ig 
norance  of  Omar  Khayyam — not  lack  of  acquaint 
ance  with  his  works,  but  lack  of  knowledge  that  such 
a  person  had  ever  existed.  If  at  some  period  in  her 
life  she  had  held  in  her  hand  a  copy  of  "The  Rubai- 
yat/'  and  had  glanced  at  its  back,  without  even  open 
ing  it,  how  much  embarrassment  she  might  have 
been  spared!  And  if,  in  addition,  she  had  glanced 
within  for  just  ten  seconds  and  had  discovered  that 
he  wrote  poetry  in  stanzas  of  four  lines  each,  she 
would  have  known  as  much  about  Omar  as  do  many 
of  those  who  would  contemptuously  scoff  at  her  ig 
norance.  With,  so  brief  effort  ma,y  we  acquire  liter 
ary  knowledge  sufficient  to  avoid  embarrassment  in 
ordinary  conversation.  Bro\vsing  in  a  good  library, 
if  the  browser  lias  a  memory,  will  soon  equip  him 
with  a  wide  range  of  knowledge  of  this  kind.  Nor 
is  such  knowledge  to  be  sneered  at  as  superficial.  It 
is  all  that  we  know,  or  need  to  know,  about  scores  of 
authors.  One  may  never  study  higher  mathematics, 
but  it  may  be  good  for  him  to  know  that  Lagrange 
was  a  French  author  who  wrote  on  analytical  me 
chanics,  that  Euclid  was  a  Greek  geometer,  and  that 
Hamilton  invented  quaternions.  All  this  and  vastly 
more  may  be  impressed  on  the  mind  by  an  hour  in 
the  mathematical  alcove  of  a  library  of  moderate 
size.  And  it  will  do  no  harm  to  a  boy  to  know  that 
Benvenuto  Cellini  wrote  his  autobiography,  even  if 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  109 

the  inevitable  perusal  of  the  book  is  delayed  for  sev 
eral  years,  or  that  Felicia  Hemans,  James  Thomson, 
and  Eobert  Herrick  wrote  poetry,  independently  of 
familiarity  with  their  works,  or  that  "Lamia"  is  not 
something  to  eat  or  "As  you  like  it"  a  popular  novel. 
Information  of  this  kind  is  almost  impossible  to  ac 
quire  from  lists  or  from  oral  statement,  whereas  a 
moment's  handling  of  a  book  in  the  concrete  may 
fix  it  in  the  mind  for  good  and  all.  So  far,  we  have 
not  supposed  that  even  a  word  of  the  contents  has 
been  read.  What,  now,  if  a  sentence,  a  stanza,  a 
paragraph,  a  page,  passes  into  the  brain  through  the 
eye?  Those  who  measure  literary  effect  by  the  thou 
sand  words  or  by  the  hour  are  making  a  great  mis 
take.  The  lightning  flash  is  over  in  a  fraction  of  a 
second,  but  in  that  time  it  may  reveal  a  scene  of 
beauty,  may  give  the  traveller  warning  of  the  fatal 
precipice,  or  may  shatter  the  farmer's  home  into 
kindling  wood.  Intellectual  lightning  may  strike 
the  "browser"  as  lie  stands  there  book  in  hand  before 
the  shelf.  A  word,  a  phrase,  may  sear  into  his  brain 
« — may  turn  the  current  of  his  whole  life.  And  even 
if  no  such  epoch-making  words  meet  his  eye,  in  how 
brief  a  time  may  he  read,  digest,  appreciate,  some  ot 
the  gems  of  literature !  Leigh  Hunt's  "Jennie  kissed 
me"  would  probably  take  about  thirty  seconds;  on  a 
second  reading  he  would  have  it  by  heart — the  joy  of 
a  life-time.  How  many  meaty  epigrams  would  take 
as  long?  The  whole  of  Gray's  "Elegy"  is  hardly  be 
yond  the  browser's  limit. 

In  an  editorial  on  the  Harvard  Classics  in  the 
"Chicago  evening  post",  (April  22),  we  read,  "the 
cultural  tabloid  has  very  little  virtue;  ...  to  gain 
everything  that  a  book  has  to  give  one  must  be  sub 
merged  in  it,  saturated  and  absorbed".  This  is  very 
much  like  saying,  "there  is  very  little  nourishment 


110  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

in  a  sandwich;  to  get  the  full  effect  of  a  luncheon 
you  must  eat  everything  on  the  table".  It  is  a  truism 
to  say  that  you  can  not  get  everything  in  a  book  with 
out  reading  all  of  it ;  but  it  by  110  means  follows  that 
the  virtue  of  less  than  the  whole  is  negligible. 

So  much  for  the  direct  effect  of  what  one  may 
thus  take  in,  bit  by  bit.  The  indirect  effect  is  even 
more  important.  For  by  sampling  a  whole  litera 
ture,  as  he  does,  he  not  only  gets  a  bird's-eye  view 
of  it,  but  he  finds  out  what  he  likes  and  what  he  dis 
likes;  he  begins  to  form  his  taste.  Are  you  afraid 
that  he  will  form  it  wrong?  I  am  not.  We  are  as 
suming  that  the  library  where  he  browses  is  a  good 
one;  here  is  no  chance  of  evil,  only  a  choice  between 
different  kinds  of  good.  And  even  if  the  evil  be 
there,  it  is  astonishing  how  the  healthy  mind  will 
let  it  slip  and  fasten  eagerly  on  the  good.  Would 
you  prefer  a  taste  fixed  by  someone  who  tells  the 
browser  what  he  ought  to  like?  Then  that  is  not 
the  reader's  own  taste  at  all,  but  that  of  his  inform 
ant.  We  have  too  much  of  this  sort  of  thing — too 
many  readers  without  an  atom  of  taste  of  their  own 
who  will  say,  for  instance,  that  they  adore  George 
Meredith,  because  some  one  has  told  them  that  all 
intellectual  persons  do  so.  The  man  who  frankly 
loves  George  Ade  and  can  yet  see  nothing  in  Shake 
speare  may  one  day  discover  Shakespeare.  The  man 
who  reads  Shakespeare  merely  because  he  thinks  he 
ought  to  is  hopeless. 

But  what  a  triumph,  to  stand  spell-bound  by  the 
art  of  a  writer  whose  name  you  never  heard,  and 
then  discover  that  he  is  one  of  the  great  ones  of  the 
world!  Nought  is  comparable  to  it  except  perhaps 
to  pick  out  all  by  yourself  in  the  exhibition  the  one 
picture  that  the  experts  have  chosen  for  the  museum 


COMPANIONSHIP    OF    BOOKS  111 

or  to  be  able  to  say  you  liked  olives  the  first  time 
you  tasted  them. 

Who  are  your  favorites?  Did  some  one  guide  you 
to  them  or  did  you  find  them  yourselves?  I  will 
warrant  that  in  many  cases  you  discovered  thenT  and 
that  this  is  why  you  love  them.  I  discovered  De- 
Quincey's  romances,  Praed's  poetry,  Beranger  in 
French,  Heine  in  German,  "The  Arabian  nights", 
Moliere,  Irving's  "Alhambra,"  hundreds  of  others 
probably.  I  am  sure  that  I  love  them  all  far  more 
than  if  some  one  had  told  me  they  were  good  books. 
If  I  had  been  obliged  to  read  them  in  school  and  pass 
an  examination  on  them,  I  should  have  hated  them. 
The  teacher  who  can  write  an  examination  paper  on 
Gray's  "Elegy",  would,  I  firmly  believe,  cut  up  his 
grandmother  alive  before  the  physiology  class. 

And  next  to  the  author  or  the  book  that  you  have 
discovered  yourself  comes  the  one  that  the  discoverer 
himself — your  boy  or  girl  friend — tells  you  about. 
He  knows  a  good  thing — she  knows  it!  No  school 
nonsense  about  that;  no  adult  misunderstanding.  I 
found  out  Poe  that  way,  and  Thackeray's  "Major 
Gahagan",  and  many  others. 

To  go  back  to  our  old  illustration  and  consider 
for  a  moment  not  the  book  but  the  mind,  the  person 
ality  whose  ideas  it  records,  such  association  with 
books  represents  association  with  one's  fellowmen  in 
society — at  a  reception,  in  school  or  college,  at  a 
club.  Some  we  pass  by  with  a  nod,  ^rith  some  we 
exchange  a  word;  sometimes  there  is  a  warm  hand- 
grasp;  sometimes  a  long  conversation.  No  matter 
what  the  mental  contact  may  be,  it  has  its  effects— 
we  are  continually  gaining  knowledge,  making  new 
friends,  receiving  fresh  inspiration.  The  complex 
ion  of  this  kind  of  dailv  association  determines  the 


112  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

cast  of  one's  mind,  the  thoroughness  of  his  taste,  the 
usefulness  or  uselessness  of  what  he  does.  A  man  is 
known  by  the  company  he  keeps,  because  that  com 
pany  forms  him ;  he  gets  from  it  what  becomes  brain 
of  his  brain  and  soul  of  his  soul. 

And  no  less  is  he  formed  by  his  mental  associa 
tions  with  the  good  and  the  great  of  all  ages  whom 
he  meets  in  books  and  who  talk  to  him  there.  More 
rather  than  less;  for  into  a  book  the  writer  puts  gen 
erally  what  is  best  in  him,  laying  aside  the  petti 
ness,  the  triviality,  the  downright  wickedness  that 
may  have  characterized  him  in  the  flesh. 

I  have  often  heard  the  comment  from  one  who 
had  met  face  to  face  a  writer  whose  work  he  loved— 
"Oh!  he  disappointed  me  so!"  How  disappointed 
might  we  be  with  Thackeray,  with  Dickens,  even 
with  Shakespeare,  could  we  meet  them  in  the  flesh ! 
Now  they  can  not  disappoint  us,  for  we  know  only 
what  they  have  left  on  record — the  best,  the  most 
enduring  part,  purified  from  what  is  gross  and  earth- 

iy- 

In  and  among  such  company  as  this  it  is  your 
privilege  to  live  and  move,  almost  without  money 
and  without  price.  Thank  God  for  books;  let  them 
be  your  friends  and  companions  through  life — for 
information,  for  recreation,  but  above  all  for  inspira 
tion. 


ATOMIC  THEORIES  OF  ENEEGY  * 

A  theory  involving  some  sort  of  a  discrete  or  dis 
continuous  structure  of  energy  has  been  put  for 
ward  by  Prof.  Max  Planck  of  the  University  of  Ber 
lin.  The  various  aspects  of  this  theory  are  discussed 
and  elaborated  by  the  late  M.  Henri  Poincare  in  a 
paper  entitled  "L'Hypothese  des  Quanta/'  published 
in  the  Revue  Scientifiquc  (Paris,  Feb.  21,  1912). 

A  paper  in  which  a  discontinuous  or  "atomic" 
structure  of  energy  was  suggested  was  prepared  by 
the  present  writer  fifteen  years  ago  but  remains  un 
published  for  reasons  that  will  appear  later.  Al 
though  he  has  no  desire  to  put  in  a  claim  of  priority 
and  is  well  aware  that  failure  to  publish  would  put 
any  such  claim  out  of  court,  it  seems  to  him  that  in 
connection  with  present  radical  developments  in 
physical  theory  the  paper,  together  with  some  cor 
respondence  relating  thereto,  has  historical  interest. 
Planck's  theory  was  suggested  by  thermodynamical 
considerations.  In  the  paper  now  to  be  quoted  the 
matter  was  approached  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
criterion  for  determining  the  identity  of  two  portions 
of  matter  or  of  energy.  The  paper  is  as  follows : 

Some    Consideration    on    the    Identity    of    Definite 
Portions  of  Energy 

It  has  been  remarked  recently  that  physicists  are 
now  divided  into  two  opposing  schools  according  to 
the  way  in  which  they  view  the  subject  of  energy, 
some  regarding  it  as  a  mere  mathematical  abstrac 
tion  and  others  looking  upon  it  as  a  physical  entity, 

*  Read    before    the    St.    Louis    Academy    of    Science. 


114  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

filling  space  and  continuously  migrating  by  definite 
paths  from  one  place  to  another.  It  may  be  added 
that  there  are  numerous  factions  within  these  two 
parties;  for  instance,  not  all  of  those  who  consider 
energy  to  be  something  more  than  a  mere  mathemat 
ical  expression  would  maintain  that  a  given  quan 
tity  of  it  retains  its  identity  just  as  a  given  quan 
tity  of  matter  does.  In  fact  a  close  analysis  would 
possibly  show  that  opinions  are  graded  very  closely 
and  continuously  from  a  view  hardly  differing  from 
that  of  Lagrange,  who  clearly  saw  and  freely  used 
the  mathematical  considerations  involving  energy 
before  the  word  had  been  invented  or  its  physical 
meaning  developed,  up  to  that  stated  recently  in  its 
extreme  form  by  Professor  Ostwald,  who  would  re 
place  what  he  terms  a  mechanical  theory  of  the  uni 
verse  by  an  "energetical"  theory,  and  would  dwell 
exclusively  on  energy  as  opposed  to  its  vehicles. 

Differences  of  opinion  of  this  sort  very  frequent 
ly  reduce  to  differences  of  definition,  and  in  this  case 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "identity"  or  some  similar 
word  or  phrase  has  undoubtedly  much  to  do  with 
the  view  that  is  taken  of  the  matter.  It  may  be  in 
teresting,  for  instance,  to  look  for  a  moment  at  our 
ideas  of  the  identity  of  matter  and  the  extent  to 
which  they  are  influenced  by  the  accepted  theory  of 
its  constitution. 

Very  few  persons  would  hesitate  to  admit  that 
the  matter  that  now  constitutes  the  universe  is  iden 
tical  in  amount  with  that  which  constituted  it  one 
million  years  ago,  and  that  any  given  portion  of  that 
matter  is  identical  with  an  equal  amount  of  matter 
that  then  existed,  although  the  situations  of  the 
parts  of  that  portion  might  be  and  probably  were 
widely  different  in  the  two  classes.  To  assert  this 
is  of  course  a  very  different  thing  from  asserting  that 


ATOMIC    THEORIES  115 

the  identity  of  the  two  portions  or  any  parts  there 
of  could  have  been  practically  shown  by  following 
them  during  all  their  changes  of  location  or  state. 
That  cannot  be  done  even  in  the  case  of  some  simple 
changes  that  are  effected  in  a  fraction  of  a  second. 
For  instance,  if  water  from  the  pail  A  be  mixed  with 
water  from  the  pail  B  there  is  no  possible  way 
of  telling  which  pail  any  given  portion  of  the  mix 
ture  came  from  or  in  what  proportions,  yet  it  is  cer 
tain  that  such  portion  is  identical  with  a  portion  of 
equal  mass  that  recently  occupied  part  of  one  or 
both  pails. 

How  far  our  certainty  as  to  this  is  influenced  by 
our  ideas  regarding  the  ultimate  constitution  of  the 
water  is  worthy  of  investigation.  All  who  accept 
the  molecular  theory,  for  instance,  will  regard  our 
inability  to  trace  the  elements  of  a  mixture  as  due 
to  purely  physical  limitations.  A  set  of  Maxwell's 
"demons"'  if  bidden  to  watch  the  molecules  of  the 
water  in  pail  A,  one  demon  being  assigned  to  each 
molecule,  would  be  able  to  tell  us  at  any  time  the 
precise  proportions  of  any  given  part  of  the  mix 
ture.  But  if  we  should  not  accept  the  molecular 
theory  and  believe  for  instance,  that  water  is  a  con 
tinuum,  absolutely  homogeneous,  no  matter  how 
small  portions  of  it  be  selected,  then  our  demons 
would  be  as  powerless  as  we  ourselves  now  are  to 
trace  the  constituents  in  the  mixture. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  ask  the  question :  Is 
the  matter  in  a  mixture  of  two  continua  identical 
with  that  of  its  constituents?  The  identity  certain 
ly  seems  of  a  different  kind  or  degree  from  that 
which  obtains  in  the  first  case,  for  there  is  no  part, 
however  small,  that  was  derived  from  one  pail  alone. 
The  mixture  is  something  more  than  a  mere  juxta 
position  of  elements  each  of  which  has  retained  its 


116  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

identity;  it  is  now  of  such  nature  that  no  part  of  it 
is  identical  with  any  part  of  A  alone  or  of  15  alone, 
nor  of  A+B,  where  the  sign  +  denotes  simple 
juxtaposition.  It  is  identical,  to  be  sure,  with  a  per 
fect  mixture  of  certain  parts  of  A  and  B,  but  this 
is  simply  saying  that  it  is  identical  with  what  it  is 
now,  that  is,  with  itself,  not  witli  something  that 
went  before. 

Probably  no  one  now  believes  that  water  or  any 
other  kind  of  matter  is  a  continuum,  but  the  bearing 
of  what  has  been  said  may  be  seen  when  we  remem 
ber  that  this  is  precisely  the.  present  stage  of  our  be 
lief  regarding  energy. 

No  one,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  ventured  to  sug 
gest  what  may  be  termed  a  molecular  theory  of  en 
ergy,  a  somewhat  remarkable  fact  when  we  consider 
the  control  now  exercised  over  all  thought  in  phys 
ics  by  molecular  theories  of  matter.  While  we  now 
believe,  for  instance,  that  a  material  body,  say  a 
crystal,  can  by  no  possibility  increase  continuously 
in  mass,  but  must  do  so  step  by  step,  the  minimum 
mass  of  matter  that  can  be  added  being  the  mole 
cule,  we  believe  on  the  contrary  that  the  energy  pos 
sessed  by  the  same  body  can  and  may  increase  with 
absolutely  perfect  continuity,  being  hampered  by  no 
such  restriction. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  paper  to  discuss 
whether  we  have  grounds  for  belief  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  minimum  quantity,  or  atom,  of  en 
ergy,  that  does  not  separate  into  smaller  parts,  no 
matter  what  changes  it  undergoes.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  there  appears  to  be  no  <i  />r/on  absurdity  in 
such  an  idea.  At  first  sight  both  matter  and  energy 
appear  non-molecular  in  structure.  But  we  have 
been  forced  to  look  upon  the  gradual  growth  of  a 
crystal  as  a  step-by-step  process,  and  we  may  some 


ATOMIC    THEORIES  117 

day,  by  equally  cogent  considerations,  be  forced  to 
regard  the  gradual  increase  of  energy  of  an  acceler 
ating  body  as  also  a  step-by-step  process,  although 
the  discontinuity  is  as  invisible  to  the  eye  in  the  lat 
ter  case  as  in  the  former. 

Without  following  this  out  any  farther,  however, 
the  point  may  be  here  emphasized  that  it  is  hardly 
possible  for  one  who,  like  the  majority  of  physicists, 
regards  matter  as  molecular  and  energy  as  a  con 
tinuum,  to  hold  the  same  ideas  regarding  the  ident 
ity  of  the  two.  Efforts  to  show  that  definite  por 
tions  of  energy,  like  definite  portions  of  matter,  re 
tain  their  identity  have  hitherto  been  made  chiefly 
on  the  lines  of  a  demonstration  that  energy  travels 
by  definite  and  continuous  paths  in  space  just  as 
matter  does.  This  is  very  well,  but  it  would  appear 
to  be  necessary  to  supplement  it  with  evidence  to 
show  that  the  lines  representing  these  paths  do  not 
form  at  their  intersections  continuous  blurs  that  not 
only  forbid  any  practical  attempt  at  identification 
on  emergence,  but  make  it  doubtful  whether  we  can 
in  any  true  sense  call  the  issuing  path  identical  with 
the  entering  one.  Otherwise  the  identity  of  energy 
can  be  admitted  to  be  only  that  kind  of  identity  that 
could  be  preserved  by  matter  if  its  molecular  struc 
ture  did  not  exist.  One  who  can  admit  that  this 
sort  of  identity  is  the  same  sort  that  can  be  pre 
served  by  molecular  matter  may  be  able  to  hold  the 
identity  of  energy  in  the  present  state  of  the  evi 
dence,  but  the  present  attitude  of  physicists  would 
seem  to  show  that,  whether  they  realize  the  connec 
tion  of  the  two  subjects  or  not,  they  cannot  take  this 
view.  In  other  words,  modern  views  of  the  identity 
of  matter  seem  closely  connected  with  modern  views 
of  its  structure,  and  the  same  connection  will  doubt 
less  hold  good  for  energy. 


118  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Regarding  tlie  probable  success  of  an  attempt  to 
prove  that  energy  has  a  "structure"  analogous  to  the 
molecular  structure  of  matter,  any  prediction  would 
doubtless  be  rash  just  now.  The  writer  has  been  un 
able,  up  to  the  present  time,  to  disprove  the  proposi 
tion,  but  the  subject  is  one  of  corresponding  im 
portance  to  that  of  the  whole  molecular  theory  of 
matter  and  should  not  be  entered  upon  lightly. 
»  *  *  *  * 

The  writer  freely  acknowledges  at  present  that 
the  illustrations  in  the  foregoing  are  badly  chosen 
and  some  of  the  statements  are  too  strong,  but  it 
still  represents  essentially  his  ideas  on  the  subject. 
No  reputable  scientific  journal  would  undertake  to 
publish  it.  The  paper  was  then  sent  to  Prof.  J. 
Willard  Gibbs  of  Yale,  and  elicited  the  following 
letter  from  him  : 

"NEW  HAVEN,  JUNE  2,  1897. 
"My  DEAR  MR.  BOSTWICK: 

"I  regret  that  I  have  allowed  your  letter  to  lie  so  long  unan 
swered.  It  was  in  fact  not  very  easy  to  answer,  and  when  one 
lays  a  letter  aside  to  answer,  the  weeks  slip  away  very  fast. 

"I  do  not  think  that  you  state  the  matter  quite  right  in  regard 
to  the  mixture  of  fluids  if  they  were  continuous.  The  mixing  of 
water  as  I  regard  it  would  be  like  this,  if  it  were  continuous  and 
not  molecular.  Suppose  you  should  take  strips  of  white  and  red 
glass  and  heat  them  until  soft  and  twist  them  together.  Keep  on 
drawing  them  out  and  doubling  them  up  and  twisting  them  to 
gether.  It  would  soon  require  a  microscope  to  distinguish  the  red 
and  white  glass,  which  would  be  drawn  out  into  thinner  and  thin 
ner  filaments  if  the  matter  were  continuous.  But  it  would  be  al 
ways  only  a  matter  of  optical  power  to  distinguish  perfectly  the 
portion  of  red  and  white  glass.  The  stirring  up  of  water  from  two 
pails  would  not  really  mix  them  but  only  entangle  filaments  from 
the  pails. 

"To  come  to  the  case  of  energy.  All  our  ideas  concerning 
energy  seem  to  require  that  it  is  capable  of  gradual  increase.  Thus 
the  energy  due  to  velocity  can  increase  continuously  if  velocity  can. 
Since  the  energy  is  as  the  square  of  the  velocity,  if  the  velocity 
can  only  increase  discontinuously  by  equal  increments,  the  energy 
of  the  body  will  increase  by  unequal  increments  in  such  a  way 
as  to  make  the  exchange  of  energy  between  bodies  a  very  awk 
ward  matter  to  adjust. 

"But   apart    from   the   question   of   the   increase  of   energy   by 


ATOMIC    THEORIES  119 

discontinuous  increments,  the  question  of  relative  and  absolute  mo 
tion  makes  it  very  hard  to  give  a  particular  position  to  energy, 
since  the  'energy'  we  speak  of  in  any  case  is  not  one  quantity 
but  may  be  interpreted  in  a  great  many  ways.  Take  the  important 
case  of  two  equal  elastic  balls.  One,  moving,  strikes  the  other 
at  rest,  we  say,  and  gives  it  nearly  all  its  energy.  But  we  have 
no  right  to  call  one  ball  at  rest  and  we  can  not  say  (as  anything  ab 
solute)  which  of  the  balls  has  lost  and  which  has  gained  energy. 
If  there  is  such  a  thing  as  absolute  energy  of  motion  it  is  some 
thing  entirely  unknowable  to  us.  Take  the  solar  system,  supposed 
isolated.  We  may  take  as  our  origin  of  coordinates  the  center  of 
gravity  of  the  system.  Or  we  may  take  an  origin  with  respect 
to  which  the  center  of  gravity  of  the  solar  system  has  any  (con 
stant)  velocity.  The  kinetic  energy  of  the  earth,  for  example, 
may  have  any  value  whatever,  and  the  principle  of  the  conserva 
tion  of  energy  will  hold  in  any  case  for  the  whole  solar  system. 
But  the  shifting  of  energy  from  one  planet  to  another  will  take 
place  entirely  differently  when  we  estimate  the  energies  with  refer 
ence  to  different  origins. 

"It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  your  ideas  fit  in  with  what  we 
know  about  nature.  If  you  ask  my  advice,  I  should  not  advise 
you  to  try  to  publish  them. 

"At  best  you  would  be  entering  into  a  discussion  (perhaps  not 
in  bad  company)  in  which  words  would  play  a  greater  part  than 
precise  ideas. 

"This  is  the  way  I   feel  about  it. 
"I  remain, 

"Yours    faithfully, 

"J.  W.  GIBBS." 

Professor  Gibbs's  criticism  of  the  illustration  of 
water-mixture  is  evidently  just.  Another  might  well 
have  been  used  where  the  things  mixed  are  not  mate 
rial — for  instance,  the  value  of  money  deposited  in 
a  bank.  If  A  and  B  each  deposits  f  100  to  C's  credit 
and  C  then  draws  $10,  there  is  evidently  no  way  of 
determining  what  part  of  it  came  from  A  and  what 
from  B.  The  structure  of  "value",  in  other  words, 
is  perfectly  continuous.  Professor  Gibbs's  objec 
tions  to  an  "atomic"  theory  of  the  structure  of  en 
ergy  are  most  interesting.  The  difficulties  that  it 
involves  are  not  over-stated.  In  1897  they  made  it 
unnecessary,  but  since  that  time  considerations  have 
been  brought  forward,  and  generally  recognized, 
which  may  make  it  necessary  to  brave  those  difficul 
ties. 


120  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Planck's  theory  was  suggested  by  the  apparent 
necessity  of  modifying  the  generally  accepted  theory 
of  statistical  equilibrium  involving  the  socalled  "law 
of  equipartition,"  enunciated  first  for  gases  and  ex 
tended  to  liquids  and  solids. 

In  the  first  place  the  kinetic  theory  fixes  the  num 
ber  of  degrees  of  freedom  of  each  gaseous  molecule, 
which  would  be  three  for  argon,  for  instance,  and 
live  for  oxygen.  But  what  prevents  either  from  hav 
ing  the  six  degrees  to  which  ordinary  mechanical 
theory  entitles  it?  Furthermore,  the  oxygen  spec 
trum  has  more  than  five  lines,  and  the  molecule  must 
therefore  vibrate  in  more  than  five  modes.  "Why," 
asks  Poincare,  "do  certain  degrees  of  freedom  ap 
pear  to  play  no  part  here;  why  are  they,  so  to  speak, 
'aukylosed'?''  Again,  suppose  a  system  in  statis 
tical  equilibrium,  each  part  gaining  on  an  average, 
in  a  short  time,  exactly  as  much  as  it  loses.  If  the 
system  consists  of  molecules  and  ether,  as  the  former 
have  a  finite  number  of  degrees  of  freedom  and  the 
latter  an  infinite  number,  the  unmodified  law  of  equi 
partition  would  require  that  the  ether  should  finally 
appropriate  all  energy,  leaving  none  of  it  to  the  mat 
ter.  To  escape  this  conclusion  we  have  Rayleigh's 
law  that  the  radiated  energy,  for  a  given  wave  length, 
is  proportional  to  the  absolute  temperature,  and  for 
a  given  temperature  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  fourth 
power  of  the  wave-length.  This  is  found  by  Planck 
to  be  experimentally  un verifiable,  the  radiation  be 
ing  less  for  small  wave-lengths  and  low  tempera 
tures,  than  the  law  requires. 

Still  again,  the  specific  heats  of  solids,  instead  of 
being  sensibly  constant  at  all  temperatures,  are 
found  to  diminish  rapidly  in  the  low  temperatures 
now  available  in  liquid  air  or  hydrogen  and  appar 
ently  tend  to  disappear  at  absolute  zero.  "All  takes 
place,"  says  Poincare,  "as  if  these  molecules  lost 


ATOMIC    THEORIES  121 

some  of  their  degrees  of  freedom  in  cooling — as  if 
some  of  their  articulations  froze  at  the  limit." 

Planck  attempts  to  explain  these  facts  by  intro 
ducing  the  idea  of  what  he  calls  "quanta"  of  energy. 
To  quote  from  Poincare's  paper : 

"How  should  we  picture  a  radiating  body?  We 
know  that  a  Hertz  resonator  sends  into  the  ether 
Hertzian  waves  that  are  identical  with  luminous 
waves;  an  incandescent  body  must  then  be  regarded 
as  containing  a  very  great  number  of  tiny  resonators. 
When  the  body  is  heated,  these  resonators  acquire 
energy,  start  vibrating  and  consequently  radiate. 

"Planck's  hypothesis  consists  in  the  supposition 
that  each  of  these  resonators  can  acquire  or  lose  en 
ergy  only  by  abrupt  jumps,  in  such  a  way  that  the 
store  of  energy  that  it  possesses  must  always  be  a 
multiple  of  a  constant  quantity,  which  he  calls  a 
'quantum' — must  be  composed  of  a  whole  number  of 
quanta.  This  indivisible  unit,  this  quantum,  is  not 
the  same  for  all  resonators;  it  is  in  inverse  ratio  to 
the  wave-length,  so  that  resonators  of  short  period 
can  take  in  energy  only  in  large  pieces,  while  those 
of  long  period  can  absorb  or  give  it  out  by  small  bits. 
What  is  the  result?  Great  effort  is  necessary  to 
agitate  a  short-period  resonator,  since  this  requires 
at  least  a  quantity  of  energy  equal  to  its  quantum, 
which  is  great.  The  chances  are,  then,  that  these 
resonators  will  keep  quiet,  especially  if  the  tempera 
ture  is  low,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  there  is 
relatively  little  short-wave  radiation  in  'black  radia 
tion'  .  .  .  The  diminution  of  specific-heats  is  explained 
similarly :  When  the  temperature  falls,  a  large  num 
ber  of  vibrators  fall  below  their  quantum  and  cease 
to  vibrate,  so  that  the  total  energy  diminishes  faster 
than  the  old  theories  require." 

Here  we  have  the  germs  of  an  atomic  theory  of 
energy.  As  Poincare  now  points  out,  the  trouble  is 


122  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

that  the  quanta  are  not  constant.  In  his  study  of 
the  matter  he  notes  that  the  work  of  Prof.  Wilhelm 
Wien,  of  Wiirzburg,  leads  by  theory  to  precisely  the 
conclusion  announced  by  Planck  that  if  we  are  to 
hold  to  the  accepted  ideas  of  statistical  equilibrium 
the  energy  r.-m  vary  only  by  quanta  inversely  pro 
portional  to  wave-length.  The  mechanical  property 
of  the  resonators  imagined  by  Planck  is  therefore 
precisely  that  which  Wieirs  theory  requires.  If  we 
are  to  suppose  atoms  of  energy,  therefore,  they  must 
be  variable  atoms.  There  are  other  objections  which 
need  not  be  touched  upon  here,  the  whole  theory  be 
ing  in  a  very  early  stage.  To  quote  Poincare  again : 

"The  new  conception  is  seductive  from  a  certain 
standpoint:  for  some  time  the  tendency  has  been 
toward  atomism.  Matter  appears  to  us  as  formed 
of  indivisible  atoms;  electricity  is  no  longer  continu 
ous,  not  infinitely  divisible.  It  resolves  itself  into 
equally-charged  electrons ;  we  have  also  now7  the  mag 
neton,  or  atom  of  magnetism.  From  this  point  of 
view  the  quanta  appear  as  atoms  of  energy.  Unfor 
tunately  the  comparison  may  not  be  pushed  to  the 
limit ;  a  hydrogen  atom  is  really  invariable.  .  .  .  The 
electrons  preserve  their  individuality  amid  the  most 
diverse  vicissitudes,  is  it  the  same  with  the  atoms  of 
energy?  We  have,  for  instance,  three  quanta  of  en 
ergy  in  a  resonator  whose  wave-length  is  3 ;  this 
passes  to  a  second  resonator  whose  wave-length  is  5 ; 
it  now  represents  not  3  but  5  quanta,  since  the  quan 
tum  of  the  newT  resonator  is  smaller  and  in  the  trans 
formation  the  number  of  atoms  and  the  size  of  each 
has  changed." 

If,  however,  we  replace  the  atom  of  energy  by  an 
"atom  of  action/'  these  atoms  may  be  considered 
equal  and  invariable.  The  whole  study  of  thermo- 
dynamic  equilibrium  has  been  reduced  by  the  French 


ATOMIC    THEORIES  123 

mathematical  school  to  a  question  of  probability. 
"The  probability  of  a  continuous  variable  is  obtained 
by  considering  elementary  independent  domains  of 
equal  probability.  ...  In  the  classic  dynamics  we 
use,  to  find  these  elementary  domains,  the  theorem 
that  two  physical  states  of  which  one  is  the  neces 
sary  effect  of  the  other  are  equally  probable.  In  a 
physical  system  if  we  represent  by  q  one  of  the  gen 
eralized  coordinates  and  by  p  the  corresponding  mo 
mentum,  according  to  Liouville's  theorem  the  domain 
ff  dpdq,  considered  at  given  instant,  is  invariable 
with  respect  to  the  time  if  p  and  q  vary  according  to 
Hamilton's  equations.  On  the  other  hand  p  and  q 
may,  at  a  given  instant  take  all  possible  values,  in 
dependent  of  each  other.  Whence  it  follows  that  the 
elementary  domain  is  infinitely  small,  of  the  magni 
tude  dpdq.  .  .  .  The  new  hypothesis  has  for  its  ob 
ject  to  restrict  the  variability  of  p  and  q  so  that 
these  variables  will  only  change  by  jumps.  .  .  .  Thus 
the  number  of  elementary  domains  of  probability  is 
reduced  and  the  extent  of  each  is  augmented.  The 
hypothesis  of  quanta  of  action  consists  in  supposing 
that  these  domains  are  all  equal  and  no  longer  in 
finitely  small  but  finite  and  that  for  each  ffdp  dq 
equals  liy  h  being  a  constant." 

Put  a  little  less  mathematically,  this  simply 
means  that  as  energy  equals  action  multiplied  by 
frequency,  the  fact  that  the  quantum  of  energy  is 
proportional  to  the  frequency  (or  inversely  to  the 
wave-length  as  stated  above)  is  due  simply  to  the 
fact  that  the  quantum  of  action  is  constant — a  real 
atom.  The  general  effect  on  our  physical  concep 
tions,  however,  is  the  same:  we  have  a  purely  discon 
tinuous  universe — discontinuous  not  only  in  matter 
but  in  energy  and  the  flow  of  time.  M.  Poincare 
thus  puts  it: 


124  LIBKARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

"A  physical  system  is  susceptible  only  of  a  finite 
number  of  distinct  states;  it  leaps  from  one  of  these 
to  the  next  without  passing  through  any  continuous 
series  of  intermediate  states." 

He  notes  later: 

"The  universe,  then,  leaps  suddenly  from  one 
state  to  another;  but  in  the  interval  it  must  remain 
immovable,  and  the  divers  instants  during  which  it 
keeps  in  the  same  state  can  no  longer  be  discrim 
inated  from  one  another ;  we  thus  reach  a  conception 
of  the  discontinuous  variation  of  time — the  atom  of 
time." 

I  quote  in  conclusion,  Poincare's  final  remarks : 

"The  present  state  of  the  question  is  thus  as  fol 
lows:  the  old  theories,  which  hitherto  seemed  to  ac 
count  for  all  the  known  phenomena,  have  met  with 
an  unexpected  obstacle.  Seemingly  a  modification 
becomes  necessary.  A  hypothesis  lias  presented  it 
self  to  M.  Planck's  mind,  but  so  strange  a  one  that 
one  is  tempted  to  seek  every  means  of  escaping  it; 
these  means,  however,  have  been  sought  vainly.  The 
new  theory,  however,  raises  a  host  of  difficulties, 
many  of  which  are  real  and  not  simply  illusions  due 
to  the  indolence  of  our  minds,  unwilling  to  change 
their  modes  of  thought.  .  .  . 

•"Is  discontinuity  to  reign  through  out  the  phys 
ical  universe,  and  is  its  triumph  definitive?  Or 
rather  shall  wre  find  that  it  is  but  apparent  and  hides 
a  series  of  continuous  processes?  ...  To  try  to  give 
an  opinion  just  now  on  these  questions  would  only 
be  to  waste  ink." 

It  only  remains  to  call  attention  again  to  the 
fact  that  this  conception  of  the  discontinuity  of  en 
ergy,  the  acceptance  of  which  Poincare  says  would 
be  "the  most  profound  revolution  that  natural  philos 
ophy  has  undergone  since  Newton"  was  suggested  by 


ATOMIC    THEOKIES  125 

the  present  writer  fifteen  years  ago.  Its  reception 
and  serious  consideration  by  one  of  the  first  mathe 
matical  physicists  of  the  world  seems  a  sufficient 
justification  of  its  suggestion  then  as  a  legitimate 
scientific  hypothesis. 


THE  ADVERTISEMENT  OF  IDEAS 

Writing  is  a  device  for  the  storage  of  ideas — the 
only  device  for  this  purpose  prior  to  the  invention 
of  the  phonograph,  and  not  now  likely  to  be  gener 
ally  superseded.  A  book  consists  of  stored  ideas; 
sometimes  it  is  like  a  box,  from  which  the  contents 
must  be  lifted  slowly  and  with  more  or  less  toil; 
sometimes  like  a  storage  battery  where  one  only  has 
to  make  the  right  kind  of  contact  to  get  a  discharge. 
At  any  rate,  if  we  want  people  to  use  books  or  to 
use  them  more,  or  to  use  them  better,  or  to  use  a  dif 
ferent  kind  from  that  which  they  now  use,  we  must 
lose  sight  for  a  moment  of  the  material  part  of  the 
book,  which  is  only  the  box  or  the  lead  and  acid  of 
the  storage  battery,  and  fix  our  attention  on  the 
stored  ideas,  which  are  what  everybody  wants — 
everybody,  that  is,  except  those  who  collect  books  as 
curiosities.  The  subject  of  this  lecture  is  thus  only 
library  advertising,  about  which  we  have  heard  a 
.good  deal  of  late,  but  we  shall  try  to  confine  its  ap 
plications  to  this  inner  or  ideal  substance  which  it 
is  our  special  business  as  librarians  to  purvey.  And 
first,  in  considering  the  matter,  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  say  a  word  about  advertising  in  general. 
Practically  an  advertisement  is  an  announcement  by 
somebody  who  has  something  to  distribute.  An 
nouncements  of  this  kind  may  be  classified,  it  seems 
to  me,  as  economic,  uneconomic  and  illegitimate. 

The  most  elementary  form  is  that  of  the  person 
who  tells  you  where  you  can  get  something  that  you 
want — a  simple  statement  that  someone  is  a  barber 
or  an  inn-keeper,  or  gives  music  lessons,  or  has  shoes 


128  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

for  sale.  This  may  be  accompanied  by  an  effort  to 
show  that  the  goods  offered  are  of  specially  good 
quality  or  have  some  feature  that  makes  them  par 
ticularly  desirable,  either  to  consumers  in  general  or 
to  those  of  a  certain  class.  This  is  all  surely  eco 
nomic,  so  long  as  nothing  but  the  truth  is  told.  Next 
we  have  an  effort  not  only  to  supply  existing  wants 
and  to  direct  them  into  some  particular  channel,  but 
to  create  a  new  field,  to  make  people  realize  a  lack 
previously  not  felt;  in  other  words  to  make  people 
want  something  that  they  need.  This  may  be  done 
simply  by  exhibiting  or  describing  the  article  or  it 
may  require  long  and  skillful  presentation  of  the 
matter.  All  this  is  still  economic.  But  it  requires 
only  a  step  to  carry  us  across  the  line.  Next  the 
enthusiastic  advertiser  strives  to  make  someone  want 
that  which  he  does  not  need.  As  may  be  seen,  the 
line  here  is  difficult  to  determine,  but  this  sort  of  ad 
vertising  is  surely  not  economic.  So  long  as  the 
thing  not  needed  is  not  really  injurious,  however, 
the  advertising  cannot  be  called  illegitimate.  It  is 
simply  uneconomic.  The  world  would  be  better  off 
without  it,  but  we  may  look  for  its  abolition  only  to 
the  increase  of  good  judgment  and  intelligence 
among  consumers.  When  an  attempt  however,  is 
made  to  cause  a  man  to  want  something  that  is  real 
ly  injurious,  then  the  act  becomes  illegitimate  and 
should  be  prevented.  Another  class  of  illegitimate 
advertising  is  that  which  would  be  perfectly  allow 
able  if  it  were  truthful  and  becomes  objectionable 
only  because  its  representations  are  false.  It  may  be 
ostensibly  of  any  of  the  types  noted  above. 

As  we  have  already  noted,  the  material  objects 
distributed  by  the  librarian  are  valued  not  for  their 
physical  characteristics  but  for  a  different  reason  al 
together,  the  fact  that  they  contain  stored  ideas. 


ADVERTISEMENT    OF    IDEAS  129 

Ideas  which,  according  to  some,  are  merely  the  rela 
tive  positions  of  material  particles  in  the  brain,  and 
which  are  indisputably  accompanied  and  conditioned 
by  such  positions,  here  subsist  in  the  form  of  pecul 
iar  and  visible  arrangements  of  particles  of  print 
er's  ink  upon  paper,  which  are  capable  under  certain 
conditions  of  generating  in  the  human  brain  ideas 
precisely  similar  to  those  that  gave  them  birth.  And 
although  the  book  cannot  think  for  itself,  but  must 
merely  preserve  the  idea  intrusted  to  it,  without 
change,  it  is  vastly  superior  in  stability  to  the  brain 
that  gave  it  birth,  so  that  thousands  of  years  after 
that  brain  has  mouldered  into  dust  it  is  capable  of 
reproducing  the  original  ideas  in  a  second  brain 
where  they  may  germinate  and  bear  fruit.  How 
familiar  all  this  is,  and  yet  how  perennially  wonder 
ful!  The  miracle  of  it  is  sufficient  excuse  for  this 
digression. 

Now  books,  beside  this  modern  form  of  distribu 
tion  by  loan,  are  widely  distributed  commercially 
both  by  loan  and  by  sale,  and  especially  in  the  lat 
ter  form  advertisement  is  now  very  extensively  useu 
in  connection  with  the  distribution.  In  fact  sve 
have  all  the  different  types  specified  above — eco 
nomic,  uneconomic  and  illegitimate,  both  through 
misrepresentation  and  the  harmful  character  of  the 
subject  matter.  The  reason  for  all  illegitimate  forms 
of  advertising  is  of  course  not  a  desire  to  misrepre 
sent  or  to  do  harm  per  se,  but  to  make  money,  the 
profit  to  the  distributor  being  proportioned  to  the 
amount  of  distribution  done  and  not  at  all  dependent 
on  its  economic  value.  Distribution  by  public  offi 
cers  is  of  course  not  open  to  this  objection,  nor  are 
the  distributors  subject  to  temptation,  since  their 
compensation  does  not  depend  on  the  amount  of  dis 
tribution.  If  they  are  capable  and  interested,  fur- 


130  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

thermore,  they  are  particularly  desirous  to  increase 
the  economic  value  of  the  work  that  they  are  doing. 
Since  this  is  so  and  since  the  danger  of  uneconomic 
or  harmful  forms  of  advertising  is  thus  reduced  to 
a  minimum,  there  would  seem  to  be  special  reason 
why  the  economic  forms  should  be  employed  very 
freely.  But  the  fact  is  that  they  have  been  used  spar 
ingly,  and  by  some  librarians  shunned  altogether. 

Let  us  see  what  library  advertising  of  the  eco 
nomic  types  may  mean.  In  the  first  place  it  means 
telling  those  who  want  books  where  they  may  get 
them.  This  simple  task  is  rarely  performed  com 
pletely  or  satisfactorily.  It  is  astonishing  how  many 
inhabitants  of  a  large  town  do  not  even  know  where 
the  public  library  is.  Everyone  realizes  this  who 
has  ever  tried  to  find  a  public  library  in  a  strange 
place.  I  once  asked  repeatedly  of  passers-by  in  a 
crowded  city  street  a  block  distant  from  a  library 
(in  this  case  not  architecturally  conspicuous)  before 
finding  one  who  knew  its  whereabouts ;  in  another 
city  I  inquired  in  vain  of  a  conductor  who  passed  the 
building  every  few  hours  in  his  car.  In  the  latter 
case  the  library  was  a  beautiful  structure  calculated 
to  move  the  curiosity  of  a  less  stolid  citizen.  In  New 
York  inquiry  would  probably  cause  you  to  reach  the 
nearest  branch  library,  anything  more  remote  than 
that  being  beyond  the  local  intelligence.  Sometimes 
I  think  we  had  better  drop  all  our  far-reaching  plans 
for  civic  betterment  and  devote  our  time  for  a  few 
years  to  causing  citizens,  lettered  and  unlettered 
alike  to  memorize  some  such  simple  formula  as  this  : 
"There  is  a  Public  Library.  'It  is  on  Blank  street. 
We  may  borrow  books  there,  free." 

You  will  notice  that  I  have  inserted  in  this  for 
mula  one  item  of  information  that  pertains  to  use, 
not  location.  For  of  those  who  know  of  the  exis- 


ADVERTISEMENT    OF    IDEAS  131 

tence  and  location  of  the  Public  Library  there  are 
many  whose  ideas  of  its  contents  and  their  uses,  and 
of  the  conditions  and  value  of  such  uses,  are  limited 
and  crude.  The  advertising  that  succeeds  in  better 
ing  this  state  of  things  is  surely  doing  an  economic 
service.  All  these  things  the  self-respecting  citizen 
should  know.  But  beyond  and  above  all  this  there 
is  the  final  economic  service  of  advertising — the 
causing  a  man  to  want  that  which  lie  needs  but  does 
not  yet  desire.  Every  man,  woman  and  child  in 
every  town  and  village  needs  books  in  some  shape, 
degree,  form  or  substance.  And  yet  the  proportion 
of  those  who  desire  them  is  yet  outrageously  small, 
though  encouragingly  on  the  increase.  Here  no 
memorizing  of  a  formula,  even  could  we  compass  it, 
could  suffice.  This  kind  of  advertising  means  the 
realization  of  something  lacking  in  a  life.  Is  the 
awakening  of  such  a  realization  too  much  for  us? 
Are  we  to  stand  by  and  see  our  neighbors  all  about 
us  awakening  to  the  undoubted  fact  that  they  need 
telephones  in  their  houses,  and  electric  runabouts, 
and  mechanical  fans  in  hot  weather,  and  pianolas, 
and  new  kinds  of  breakfast  food,  while  we  despair 
of  awakening  them  to  their  needs  of  books — quite  as 
undoubted?  Are  we  to  admit  that  personal  gain, 
which  was  the  victorious  motive  that  spurred  on  the 
commercial  advertisers  in  these  and  countless  other 
instances,  is  to  be  counted  more  mighty  than  the  de 
sire  to  do  a  service  to  our  fellowmen  and  to  fulfill 
the  duties  of  our  positions — which  should  spur  us 
on? 

I  am  not  foolish  enough  to  suppose  that  by  pla 
carding  the  fences  with  the  words  "Books!  Books !" 
as  the  patent  medicine  man  does  with  "Ouroline! 
Curoline!"  we  shall  make  any  progress.  The  patent 
medicine  man  is  right;  he  wants  to  excite  curiosity 


182  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

aiid  familiarize  the  public  with  the  name  of  his  nos 
trum.  They  all  know  what  a  book  is — and  alas  the 
name  is  not  even  unknown  and  mysterious — would 
that  it  were !  It  calls  up  in  many  minds  associations 
which,  if  we  are  to  be  successful  we  must  combat, 
overthrow,  and  replace  by  others.  To  many — sad  it 
is  to  say  it — a  book  is  an  abhorrent  thing;  to  more 
still,  it  is  a  thing  of  absolute  indifference.  To 
some  a  book  is  merely  a  collection  of  things,  hav 
ing  no  ascertainable  relationships,  that  one  is  re 
quired  to  memorize;  to  others  it  is  a  collection  of 
statements,  difficult  to  understand,  out  of  which  the 
meaning  must  be  extracted  by  hard  study;  to  very 
few  indeed  does  the  book  appear  to  be  what  it  really 
is  — a  message  from  another  mind.  People  will  go 
to  a  seance  and  listen  with  thrills  to  the  silliest  stuff 
purporting  to  proceed  from  Plato  or  Daniel  Webster 
or  Abraham  Lincoln,  when  in  the  Public  Library,  a 
few  blocks  away  are  important  and  authentic  mes 
sages  from  those  same  persons,  to  which  they  have 
never  given  heed.  Such  a  message  derives  interest 
and  significance  from  circumstances  outside  itself. 
Very  few  books  create  their  own  atmosphere  unaided. 
They  presuppose  a  system  of  abilities,  opinions,  prej 
udices,  likes  and  dislikes,  intellectual  connections 
and  what  not,  that  is  little  less  than  appalling,  if 
we  try  to  follow  it  up.  Dislike  of  books  or  indiffer 
ence  toward  them  is  often  fcimply  the  result  of  a  lack 
of  these  things  or  of  some  component  part  of  them. 
We  must  supply  what  is  lacking  if  we  are  to  arouse 
a  desire  for  books  in  those  who  do  not  yet  possess 
it.  I  say  that  such  a  labor  is  difficult  enough  to  in 
terest  him  whose  pleasure  it  is  to  essay  hard  tasks ; 
it  is  noble  enough  to  attract  him  who  loves  his  fellow- 
man;  success  in  it  is  rare  enough  and  glorious 
enough  to  stimulate  him  who  likes  to  succeed  where 


ADVERTISEMENT    OF    IDEAS  133 

others  have  failed.  Advertising  may  be  good  or  bad., 
noble  or  ignoble,  right  or  wrong,  according  to  what 
is  advertised  and  our  methods  of  advertising  it.  He 
who  would  scorn  to  announce  the  curative  powers  of 
bottled  spring- water  and  pink  aniline  dye;  he  who 
regards  it  as  a  commonplace  task  to  urge  upon  the 
spendthrift  public  the  purchase  of  unnecessary 
gloves  and  neckties,  may  well  feel  a  thrill  of  satis 
faction  and  of  anticipation  in  the  task  of  advertis 
ing  ideas  and  of  persuading  the  unheeding  citizen  to 
appropriate  what  he  has  been  accustomed  to  view 
with  indifference. 

To  get  at  the  root  of  the  matter,  let  us  inquire 
why  it  is  that  so  many  persons  do  not  care  for  books. 
We  may  divide  them,  I  think,  into  two  classes — those 
who  do  not  care,  or  appear  not  to  care  for  ideas  at 
all,  whether  stored  in  books  or  not;  and  those  who 
do  care  for  ideas  but  who  either  do  not  easily  get 
them  out  of  storage  or  do  not  realize  that  they  can 
be  and  are  stored  in  books.  Absolute  carelessness 
of  ideas  is,  it  seems  to  me,  rather  apparent  than  real. 
It  exists  only  in  the  idiot.  There  are  those  to  be 
sure  that  care  about  a  very  limited  range  of  ideas; 
but  about  some  ideas  they  always  care. 

We  must,  in  our  advertisement  of  ideas,  bear  this 
in  mind — the  necessity  of  offering  to  eacli  that  which 
he  considers  it  worth  his  while  to  take.  If  I  were 
asked  what  is  the  most  fundamentally  interesting 
subject  to  all  classes,  I  should  unhesitatingly  reply 
"philosophy."  Not,  perhaps,  the  philosophy  of  the 
schools,  but  the  individual  philosophy  that  every 
man  and  woman  has,  and  that  is  precisely  alike  in 
no  two  of  us.  I  have  heard  a  tiny  boy,  looking  up 
suddenly  from  his  play,  ask  "Why  do  we  live?"  This 
and  its  correlative  "Why  do  we  die?"  Whence  come 
we  and  whither  do  we  go?  What  is  the  universe  and 


134  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

what  are  our  relations  to  it — these  questions  in  some 
form  have  occurred  to  everyone  who  thinks  at  all. 
They  are  discussed  around  the  stove  at  the  corner 
grocery,  in  the  logging  camp,  on  the  ranch,  in  clubs 
and  at  boarding-bouse  tables.  Sometimes  they  take 
a  theological  turn — free  will,  the  origin  and  purpose 
of  evil,  and  so  on.  I  do  not  purpose  to  give  here  a 
catalogue  of  the  things  in  which  an  ordinary  man  is 
interested,  and  I  have  said  this  only  to  remind  you 
that  his  interest  may  be  vivid  even  in  connection 
with  subjects  usually  considered  abstruse.  This  in 
terest  in  ideas  we  may  call  the  library's  raw  mate 
rial;  anything  that  tends  to  create  it,  to  broaden  it, 
to  extend  it  to  new  fields  and  to  direct  it  into  paths 
that  are  worth  while  is  making  it  possible  for  the  li 
brary  to  do  better  and  wider  work — is  helping  on  its 
campaign  of  publicity.  This  establishes  a  wreb  of 
connecting  fibers  between  the  library  and  all  human 
activity.  The  man  who  is  getting  interested  in  his 
work,  debaters  at  a  labor  union,  students  at  school 
and  college,  the  worker  for  civic  reform,  the  poetic 
dreamer — all  are  creating  a  demand  for  ideas  that 
makes  it  easier  for  the  library  to  advertise  them. 
Those  who  object  to  some  of  the  outside  work  done 
by  modern  libraries  should  try  to  look  at  the  whole 
matter  from  this  standpoint.  The  library  is  taking 
its  place  as  a  public  utility  with  other  public  utili 
ties.  Its  relations  with  them  are  becoming  more  evi 
dent;  the  ties  between  them  are  growing  stronger. 
As  in  all  cases  of  such  growth  it  is  becoming  increas 
ingly  difficult  to  identify  the  boundaries  between 
them,  so  fast  and  so  thoroughly  do  the  activities  of 
each  reach  over  these  lines  and  interpenetrate  those 
of  the  others.  And  unless  there  is  actual  wasteful 
duplication  of  work,  we  need  not  bother  about  our 
respective  spheres.  These  activities  are  all  human; 


ADVERTISEMENT    OF    IDEAS  135 

they  are  mutually  interesting  and  valuable.  A  libra 
ry  need  be  afraid  of  doing  nothing  that  makes  for 
the  spread  of  interest  in  ideas,  so  long  as  it  is  not 
neglecting  its  own  particular  work  of  the  collection, 
preservation  and  distribution  of  ideas  as  stored  in 
books,  and  is  not  duplicating  other's  work  waste- 
fully. 

When  we  observe  those  who  are  already  interest 
ed  in  ideas,  however,  we  find  that  not  all  are  interest 
ed  in  them  as  they  are  stored  up  in  books.  Some  of 
these  cannot  read ;  their  number  is  small  with  us  and 
growing  smaller;  we  may  safely  leave  the  schools  to 
deal  with  them.  Others  can  read,  but  they  do  not 
easily  apprehend  ideas  through  print.  Some  of  these 
must  read  aloud  so  that  they  may  get  the  sound  of 
the  words,  before  these  really  mean  anything  to 
them.  These  persons  need  practice  in  reading.  They 
get  it  now  largely  through  the  newspapers,  but  their 
number  is  still  large.  A  person  in  this  condition 
may  be  intellectually  somewhat  advanced.  He  may 
be  able  to  discuss  single-tax  with  some  acumen,  for 
instance.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  because  a 
person  understands  a  subject  or  likes  a  tiling  and  is 
able  to  talk  well  about  it,  he  will  enjoy  and  appre 
ciate  a  book  on  that  subject  or  tiling.  It  may  be  as 
difficult  for  him  to  get  at  the  meat  of  it  as  if  it  were 
a  half-understood  foreign  tongue.  You  who  know 
enough  French  to  buy  a  pair  of  gloves  or  sufficient 
German  to  inquire  the  way  to  the  station,  may  tackle 
a  novel  in  the  original  and  realize  at  once  the  hazy 
degree  of  such  a  persons'  apprehension.  He  may 
stick  to  it  and  become  an  easy  reader,  but  on  the 
other  hand  your  well-meant  publicity  efforts  may 
place  in  his  hands  a  book  that  will  simply  discourage 
ami  ultimately  repel  him,  sending  him  to  join  the 
finny  of  those  to  whom  no  books  appeal. 


LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Next  we  find  those  who  understand  how  to  read 
and  to  read  with  ease,  but  to  whom  books — at  any 
rate  certain  classes  of  books— are  not  interesting. 
Now  interest  in  a  subject  may  be  so  great  that  one 
will  wade  through  the  driest  literature  about  it,  but 
such  interest  belongs  to  the  few — not  to  the  many. 
I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  more  readers  have 
had  their  interest  killed  or  lessened  by  books  than 
have  had  it  aroused  or  stimulated.  This  is  a  propor 
tion  that  it  is  our  business  as  librarians  to  reverse. 
More  of  this  unfortunate  and  heart-breaking,  inter 
est-killing  work  than  I  like  to  think  of  goes  on  in 
school.  Not  necessarily;  for  the  name  of  those  is 
legion  who  have  had  their  eyes  opened  to  the  beau 
ties  of  literature  by  good  teachers.  This  makes  it 
all  the  more  maddening  when  we  think  how  many 
poor  teachers,  or  good  teachers  with  mistaken  meth 
ods,  or  indifferent  teachers,  have  succeeded  in  asso 
ciating  with  books  in  the  minds  of  their  pupils  simp 
ly  burdensome  tasks — the  gloom  and  heaviness  of 
life  rather  than  its  joy  and  lightness.  Such  boys  and 
girls  will  no  more  touch  a  book  after  leaving  school 
than  you  or  I  would  touch  a  scorpion  after  one  had 
stung  us. 

Perhaps  it  is  useless  to  try  to  change  this;  pos 
sibly  it  is  none  of  our  business,  though  we  have  al 
ready  seen  that  there  are  reasons  to  the  contrary. 
P»ut  we  can  better  matters,  and  we  are  daily  better 
ing  them,  by  our  work  with  children.  If  a  child  has 
once  learned  to  love  books  and  to  associate  them 
powerfully  with  something  else  than  a  burdensome 
task,  then  the  labors  of  the  unskillful  teachers  will 
create  no  dislike  of  the  book  but  only  of  the  teacher 
his  methods;  while  these  of  the  good  teacher  will 

a  -thousand  times  more  fruitful  than  otherwise. 

So  much  for  the  ways  in  which  interesting  books 


ADVERTISEMENT    OF    IDEAS  137 

are  sometimes  made  uninteresting.  Now  for  the  books 
that  are  uninteresting  per  se — and  how  many  there 
are!  When  a  man  has  something  to  distribute  com 
mercially  for  personal  gain,  the  thing  that  he  tries 
above  all  to  do  is  to  interest  his  public — -to  make  them 
want  what  he  has  to  sell.  His  success  or  failure  in  do 
ing  this,  means  the  success  or  failure  of  his  whole  en 
terprise.  He  does  not  decide  what  kind  of  an  enter 
tainment  his  clients  ought  to  attend  and  then  try  to 
make  them  go  to  it,  or  what  kind  of  neckties  they 
ought  to  wear  and  then  try  to  make  them  wear  them. 
Of  ten  promoters,  if  nine  proceeded  on  this  principle 
and  one  on  the  plan  of  offering  something  attractive 
and  interesting,  who  would  succeed?  It  is  one  of  the 
marvels  of  all  time  that  this  never  seems  to  have  oc 
curred  to  writers  of  books.  We  are  almost  forced  to 
conclude  that  they  do  not  care  whether  their  volumes 
are  read  or  not.  In  only  one  class  of  books,as  a  rule,  do 
the  writers  endeavor  to  interest  the  reader  first  and 
foremost;  you  all  know  that  I  refer  to  fiction.  What 
is  the  result?  The  writers  of  fiction  are  the  ones  read 
by  the  public.  More  fiction  is  read,  as  you  very  well 
know,  than  all  the  other  classes  of  literature  put  to 
gether.  The  library  that  is  able  to  show  a  fiction  per 
centage  of  60,  points  to  it  with  pride,  while  there  are 
.plenty  with  percentages  between  70  and  80.  Now  this 
is  all  to  the  credit  of  the  fiction  writers.  I  refuse  to 
r  believe  that  their  readers  are  any  more  fundamental 
ly  interested  in  the  subjects  of  which  they  treat  than 
in  others.  They  simply  follow  the  line  of  least  re- 
"Ristahca-  They  want  something  interesting  to  road 
and  they  know  from  experience1  where  to  go  for  it.  Of 
course  this  brings  on  abuses.  Writers  use  illegit 
imate  methods  to  arouse  interest— appeals  perhaps, 
to  unworthy  instincts.  We  need  not  discuss  that 
here,  bnt  simply  focus  onr  attention  on  tlie  fact  that 


138  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHEL1* 

writers  of  fiction  always  try  to  be  interesting  because 
they  must ;  while  writers  of  history,  travel,  biography 
and  philosophy  do  not  usually  try,  because  they  think 
it  unnecessary.  This  is  simply  a  survival.  It  used 
to  be  true  that  readers  of  these  subjects  read  them  be 
cause  of  their  great  antecedent  interest  in  them — an 
interest  so  great  that  interesting  methods  of  presenta 
tion  became  unnecessary.  No  one  cared  about  the 
masses,  still  less  about  what  they  might  or  might  not 
read.  Things  are  changed  now;  we  are  trying  to  ad 
vertise  stored  ideas  to  persons  unfamiliar  with  them 
and  we  are  suddenly  awakening  to  the  fact  that  our 
stock  is  not  all  that  it  should  be.  We  need  history, 
science  and  travel  fascinatingly  presented — at  least 
as  interestingly  as  the  fiction-writer  presents  his  sub 
jects.  This  is  by  no  means  impossible,  because  it  has 
been  done,  in  a  few  instances.  We  are  by  no  means 
in  the  position  of  the  Irishman  who  didn't  know 
whether  or  not  he  could  play  the  piano,  because  he 
had  never  tried.  Some  of  our  authors  have  tried— 
and  succeeded.  No  one  after  William  James  can  say 
that  philosophy  cannot  be  made  interesting  to  the 
ordinary  reader.  Tyndall  showed  us  long  ago  that 
physics  could  interest  the  unlearned,  and  there  are 
similarly  interesting  writers  on  history  and  travel- 
more  perhaps  in  these  two  classes  than  any  other. 
But  it  remains  true  that  the  vast  majority  of  non-fic 
tion  books  do  not  attract,  and  were  not  written  with 
the  aim  of  attracting,  the  ordinary  reader  such  as  the 
libraries  are  now  trying  to  reach.  The  result  is  that 
the  fiction  writers  are  usurping  the  functions  of  these 
uninteresting  scribes  and  are  putting  history,  sci 
ence,  economics,  biology,  medicine — all  sorts  of  sub 
jects,  into  fictional  form — a  sufficient  answrer  to  any 
who  may  think  that  the  subjects  themselves,  as  dis 
tinguished  from  the  manner  in  which  they  are  pre- 


ADVERTISEMENT    OF    IDEAS  130 

sented,  are  calculated  to  repel  the  ordinary  reader. 
Fiction  is  thus  becoming,  if  it  has  not  already  be 
come,  the  sole  form  of  literary  expression,  so  far  as 
the  ordinary  reader  is  concerned.  This  is  interest 
ing;  it  justifies  the  large  stock  of  fiction  in  public  li 
braries  and  the  large  circulation  of  that  stock.  It 
does  not  follow  that  it  is  commendable  or  desirable. 
For  one  thing  it  places  truth  and  falsehood  precisely 
on  the  same  plane.  The  science  or  the  economics  in  a 
good  novel  may  be  bad  and  that  in  a  poor  novel  may 
be  good.  Then  again,  it  dilutes  the  interesting  matter 
with  triviality.  It  is  right  that  those  who  want  to 
know  how  and  when  and  under  what  circumstances 
Edwin  and  Angelina  concluded  to  get  married  should 
have  an  opportunity  of  doing  so,  but  it  is  obviously 
unfair  that  the  man  who  likes  the  political  discus 
sions  put  into  the  mouth  of  Edwin's  uncle,  or  the 
clever  descriptions  of  country-life  incident  to  the 
courtship,  should  be  burdened  with  information  of 
this  sort,  in  which  he  has  little  interest. 

To  those  who  are  interested  in  the  increase  of  non- 
fiction  percentages  I  would  therefore  say :  devise 
some  means  of  working  upon  the  authors.  These 
gentry  are  yet  ignorant  of  the  existence  of  a  special 
library  public.  Some  day  they  will  wake  up,  and 
then  fiction  will  be  relieved  from  the  burden  that  op 
presses  it  at  present — of  carrying  most  of  the  inter 
esting  philosophy,  religion,  history  and  social  science, 
in  addition  to  doing  its  own  proper  work. 

Meanwhile  the  librarian,  who  is  interested  in  ad 
vertising  ideas,  must  do  what  he  can  with  his  mate 
rial.  There  is  still  a  saving  remnant  of  interesting 
non-fiction,  and  there  is  a  goodly  body  of  readers 
whose  antecedent  interest  in  certain  subjects  is  great 
enough  to  attract  them  to  almost  any  book  on  those 
subjects.  I  have  purposely  avoided  the  discussion 


140  .LIBRARIAN'S    OPES    SHELF 

here  of  the  details  of  library  publicity,  which  has  been 
well  done  elsewhere;  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  ex 
pressing  my  opinion  that  the  ordinary  work  of  the 
library  and  its  stock  of  books  if  properly  display ed, 
are  more  effective  than  any  other  means  that  can  be 
used  for  the  purpose.  From  a  series  of  articles  en 
titled  "How  to  Start  Libraries  in  Small  Towns"  by 
A.  M.  Pendleton,  I  quote  the  following,  which  ap 
pears  in  The  Library  Journal  for  May  13,  1877 : 

"Plant  it  [the  library]  among  the  people,  where 
its  presence  will  be  seen  and  felt.  *  *  *  Other 
things  being  equal,  it  is  better  to  have  it  upon  the  first 
floor,  so  that  passers-by  will  see  its  goodly  array  of 
books  and  be  tempted  to  inspect  them." 

Excellent  advice;  we  might  take  it  if  we  had  not 
built  our  libraries  as  far  away  from  the  street  as  pos 
sible  and  lifted  them  up  on  as  high  a  pedestal  as  our 
money  would  buy.  Who,  passing  by  a  modern  library 
building,  branch  or  central,  can  by  any  possibility  see 
through  the  windows  enough  of  the  interior  to  tell 
whether  it  is  a  library  rather  than  a  postoffice,  a 
bank,  or  an  office? 

Before  moving  into  its  new  home  the  St.  Louis 
Public  Library  occupied  temporarily  a  business 
building  having  a  row  of  six  large  plate-glass  win 
dows  on  one  side,  directly  on  the  vsidewalk,  enabling 
passers-by  to  see  clearly  all  that  went  on  in  the  adult 
1  ending-delivery  room.  The  effect  on  the  circulation 
was  noteworthy.  During  the  last  months  of  our  oc 
cupancy  we  went  further  and  utilized  each  of  thewin- 
.clows  for  a  book  display.  This  was  in  charge  of  a 
special  committee  of  the  staff,  and  its  results  were  be 
yond  expectation.  In  one  window  we  ha<l  a  shelfful 
nf  current  books,  open  to  attractive  pictures,  with  a 
s,jo-n  reminding  wayfarers  that  tliey  might  be  taken 
<>nt  bv  cardholders  and  that  cards  were  free.  "In  an- 


ADVERTISEMENT  br  IDEAS        141 

other  we  had  standard  works,  without  pictures,  but 
open  at  attractive  pages.  In  another  we  had  chil 
dren's  books;  in  another,  open  reference  or  art  books 
in  a  dust-proof  case— and  so  on.  Each  of  these  win 
dows  was  seldom  without  its  contingent  of  gazers, 
and  the  direct  effect  on  library  circulation  was  no 
ticed  by  all.  At  the  end  of  the  year  we  moved  into 
our  great  million-and-a-half-dollar  building;  and 
beautiful  as  it  is— satisfactory  as  are  its  arrange 
ments — we  have  had — alas — to  give  up  our  show  win 
dows.  We  can,  it  is  true,  have  show  cases  in  the  great 
entrance  hall,  but  we  want  to  attract  outsiders,  not 
insiders.  Some  of  our  enthusiastic  staff  want  to 
build  permanent  show  cases  on  the  sidewalk.  What 
wTe  may  possibly  do  is  to  rent  real  show  windows  op 
posite.  WThat  we  do  not  desire,  is  to  abandon  our 
publicity  plan  altogether.  But  when,  oh  when,  shall 
we  have  libraries  (branches  at  any  rate,  if  our  main 
buildings  must  be  monumental)  that  will  throw 
themselves  open  to  the  public  eye,  luring  in  the  way 
farer  to  the  joys  of  reading,  as  the  commercial  win 
dow  does  to  the  delights  of  gum  drops  or  neckties? 

One  of  the  greatest  steps  ever  taken  toward  the 
advertisement  of  ideas  was  the  adoption,  on  a  large 
scale,  of  the  open  shelf.  This  throws  the  books  of  a 
library,  or  many  of  them,  open  to  public  inspection 
and  handling ;  it  encourages  "browsing" — the  some 
what  aimless  rambling  about  and  dipping  here  and 
there  into  a  volume. 

If  we  are  to  present  ideas  to  our  would-be  readers 
in  great  variety,  hoping  that  among  them  there  may 
be  toothsome  bait,  surely  there  could  be  no  better  way 
than  this.  The  only  trouble  is  that  it  appeals  only  to 
"those  who  are  already  sufficiently  interested  in  stored 
ideas  to  enter  the  library. 

"W^  ninst  remember,  however,  that  by  our  method 


142  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

of  sending  out  books  for  home  use  we  are  making  a 
great  open-shelf  of  the  whole  city.  While  the  number 
of  volumes  in  any  one  place  may  be  small,  the  books 
are  constantly  changing  so  that  the  non-reader  has  a 
good  chance  of  seeing  in  his  friend's  house  something 
that  may  attract  him.  That  this  may  affect  the  use 
of  the  library  it  is  essential  that  he  who  sees  a  library 
book  on  the  table  or  in  the  hands  of  a  fellow  passen 
ger  on  a  car  must  be  able  to  recognize  its  source  at 
once,  so  that,  if  attracted,  he  may  be  led  thither  by 
the  suggestion.  Nothing  is  better  for  this  purpose 
than  the  library  seal,  placed  on  the  book  where  all 
may  see  it;  and  that  all  may  recognize  it,  it  should 
also  be  used  wherever  possible,  in  connection  with  the 
library — on  letter  heads,  posters,  lists,  pockets  and 
cards,  so  that  the  public  association  between  its  dis 
play  and  the  work  of  the  library  shall  become  strong. 

This  making  the  whole  outstanding  supply  of  cir 
culating  books  an  agency  in  our  publicity  scheme  for 
ideas  is  evidently  more  effective  as  the  books  better 
fit  and  satisfy  their  users ;  for  in  that  case  we  have  an 
unpaid  agent  with  each  book.  The  adaptation  of 
book  to  user  helps  our  advertisement  of  ideas,  and 
that  in  turn  aids  us  in  adapting  book  to  user.  When 
a  dynamo  starts,  the  newly  arisen  current  makes  the 
field  stronger  and  that  in  turn  increases  the  current. 
Only  here  we  must  have  just  a  little  residual  magnet 
ism  in  the  field  magnet  to  start  the  whole  process.  In 
the  library's  work  the  residual  magnetism  is  repre 
sented  by  the  latent  interest  in  ideas  that  is  present 
in  every  community.  And  I  can  do  no  better,  in  clos 
ing,  than  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  everything  that 
advertises  ideas,  even  if  totally  unconnected  with 
their  recorded  form  in  books,  helps  the  library  and 
pushes  forward  its  work. 

Itself  a  product  of  the  great  extension  of  intellec- 


ADVERTISEMENT    OF    IDEAS  143 

tual  activity  to  classes  in  which  it  was  formerly 
bounded  by  narrow  limits,  the  library  is  bound  to 
widen  those  limits  wherever  they  can  be  stretched, 
and  every  movement  of  them  reacts  to  help  it.  Surely 
advertisement  on  its  part  is  an  evangel — a  bearing  of 
good  intellectual  tidings  into  the  darkness.  We  are 
spiritualistic  mediums  in  the  best  sense — the  bearers 
of  authentic  messages  from  all  the  good  and  great  of 
past  or  present  time;  only  with  us,  no  turning  on  of 
the  light,  no  publicity  however  glaring,  will  break  the 
spell  or  do  otherwise  than  aid,  for  whether  we  suc 
ceed  or  fail,  whether  we  live  or  die,  those  messages, 
recorded  as  they  are  in  books,  will  stand  while  hu 
manity  remains. 


• 

. 
I 

• 


THE  PUBLIC  LIBRARY,  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL, 
AND  THE  SOCIAL  CENTER  MOVEMENT  * 

The  center  of  a  geometrical  figure  is  important,  not 
for  its  size  and  content,  but  for  its  position — not  for 
what  it  is  in  itself,  but  for  its  relations  to  the  other 
elements  of  the  figure.  And  words  used  with  derived 
meanings  are  used  best  when  their  original  significa 
tions  are  kept  in  mind.  The  business  center  of  a  city 
does  not  contain  all  of  that  city's  commercial  activ 
ity  ;  when  we  speak  of  the  church  as  a  religious  center, 
we  do  not  mean  that  there  is  to  be  no  religious  activ 
ity  in  the  home  or  in  other  walks  of  life;  as  for  the 
center  of  population  of  a  large  and  populous  coun 
try,  it  may  be  out  in  the  prairie  where  neither  man 
nor  his  dwellings  are  to  be  seen.  All  these  centers 
are  what  they  are  because  of  certain  relationships. 
It  is  so  witli  a  social  center.  But  social  relationships 
cover  a  wide  field.  The  relationships  of  business,  of 
religion,  even  of  mere  co-existence,  are  all  social. 
May  we  have  a  center  for  so  wide  a  range  of  activi 
ties?  Even  the  narrower  relations  of  business  or  of 
religion  tend  to  form  subsidiary  groups  and  to  mul 
tiply  subsidiary  centers.  In  a  large  city  we  may  have 
not  only  a  general  business  center  but  centers  of  the 
real  estate  business,  of  the  hardware  or  textile  trades, 
and  so  on.  Our  religious  affiliations  condense  into 
denominational  centers. 

In  the  district  of  a  large  city  where  newly  arrived 
foreign  immigrants  gather,  you  will  be  shown  the 
'  of  blocks  where  the  Poles  or  the  Hungarians 

•       '  '  .         .    :       .  . .  I  . 

*  Read    before    the    National    Education    Association. 


14G  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

have  segregated  themselves  from  the  rest,  and  even 
within  these,  the  houses  where  dwell  families  from  a 
particular  province  or  even  from  one  definite  city  or 
village.  Man  is  socia^,  but  he  is  socially  clannish,  and 
the  broadest  is  not  so  much  he  who  refuses  to  recog 
nize  these  clan  or  caste  relationships  as  he  who  enters 
into  the  largest  number  of  them — he  who  keeps  in 
touch  with  his  childhood  home,  has  a  wide  acquain 
tance  among  those  of  his  own  religious  faith  and  of 
his  chosen  business  or  profession,  keeps  up  his  old 
college  friendships,  is  interested  in  collecting  coins  or 
paintings  and  knows  all  the  other  collectors,  is  active 
in  civic  and  charitable  societies,  takes  an  interest  in 
education  and  educators,  and  so  on.  The  social 
democracy  that  should  succeed  in  abolishing  all  these 
groups  or  leveling  them — that  should  recognize  no  re 
lationships  but  the  broader  ones  that  underly  all  hu 
man  effort  and  feeling — the  touches  of  nature  that 
make  the  whole  world  kin — would  be  barren  indeed. 

We  cannot  spare  these  fundamentals ;  we  could 
not  get  rid  of  them  if  we  would;  but  civilization  ad 
vances  by  building  upon  them,  and  to  do  away  with 
these  additions  would  be  like  destroying  a  city  to  get 
at  its  foundation,  in  the  vain  hope  of  securing  some 
wide-reaching  result  in  economics  or  aesthetics.  Oc 
cupying  a  foremost  place  among  these  groupings  is 
the  large  division  embracing  our  educational  activi 
ties.  And  these  are  social  not  only  in  the  broad  sense, 
but  also  in  the  narrower.  The  intercourse  of  student 
with  student  in  the  school  and  even  of  reader  with 
reader  in  the  library,  especially  in  such  departments 
as  the  children's  room,  is  so  obviously  that  of  society 
that  we  need  dwell  on  it  no  further. 

This  intercourse,  while  a  necessary  incident  of  edu 
cation  in  the  mass,  is  only  an  incident.  It  is  suffi- 


SOCIAL    CENTER    MOVEMENT  147 

ciently  obtrusive,  however,  to  make  it  evident  that  any 
use  of  school  or  library  building  for  social  purposes 
is  fit  and  proper.  There  is  absolutely  nothing  new  nor 
strange  about  such  use.  In  places  that  cannot  afford 
separate  buildings  for  these  purposes,  the  same  edi 
fice  has  often  served  for  church,  schoolhouse,  public 
library,  and  as  assembly  room  for  political  meetings, 
amateur  theatricals,  and  juvenile  debating  societies. 
The  propriety  of  all  this  has  never  been  questioned 
and  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  it  should  not  be  as  proper 
in  a  town  of  500,000  inhabitants  as  in  one  of  500. 
The  incidence  of  the  cost  is  a  matter  of  detail.  Why 
should  such  purely  social  use  of  these  educational 
buildings — always  common  in  small  towns — have 
been  allowed  to  fall  into  abeyance  in  the  larger  ones? 
It  is  hard  to  say ;  but  with  the  recent  great  improve 
ments  in  construction,  the  building  of  schools  and  li 
braries  that  are  models  of  beauty,  comfort,  and  con 
venience,  there  has  arisen  a  not  unnatural  feeling  in 
the  public  that  all  this  public  property  should  be  put 
to  fuller  use.  Why  should  children  be  forced  to  dance 
on  the  street  or  in  some  place  of  sordid  association 
when  comfortable  and  convenient  halls  in  library  or 
school  are  closed  and  unoccupied?  Why  should  the 
local  debating  club,  the  mothers'  meeting — nay,  why 
should  the  political  ward  meeting  be  barred  out? 
Side  by  side  with  this  trend  of  public  opinion  there 
has  been  an  awakening  realization  on  the  part  of 
many  connected  with  these  institutions  that  they 
themselves  might  benefit  by  such  extended  use. 

Probably  this  realization  has  come  earlier  and 
more  fully  to  the  library,  because  its  educational  func 
tion  is  directed  so  much  more  upon  adults.  The  li 
brary  is  coming  to  be  our  great  continuation  school 
— an  institution  of  learning  with  an  infinity  of  pure- 


148  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Ij  optional  courses.  It  may  open  its  doors  to  any  form 
of  adult  social  activity. 

There  are  forms  of  activity  proper  to  a  social  cen 
ter  that  require  special  apparatus  or  equipment. 
These  may  be  furnished  in  a  building  erected  for  the 
purpose,  as  are  the  Chicago  fieldhouses.  Here  we 
have  swimming-pools,  gymnasiums  for  men  and  for 
women,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  A  branch  library  is  in 
cluded  and  some  would  house  the  school  also  undei 
the  same  roof.  We  may  have  to  wait  long  for  the  gen 
eral  adoption  of  such  a  composite  social  center.  Our 
immediate  problem  is  to  supply  an  immediate  need 
by  using  means  directly  at  our  disposal.  And  it  is 
remarkable  how  many  kinds  of  neighborhood  activity 
may  take  place  in  a  room  unprovided  with  any  spe 
cial  equipment.  A  brief  glance  over  our  own  records 
for  only  a  few  months  past  enables  me  to  classify 
them  roughly  as  athletic  or  outdoor,  purely  social, 
educational,  debating,  political,  labor,  musical,  relig 
ious,  charitable  or  civic,  and  expository,  besides  many 
that  defy  or  elude  classification 

The  athletic  or  outdoor  organizations  include  the 
various  turning  or  gymnastic  clubs  and  the  Boy  and 
Girl  Scouts;  the  social  organizations  embrace  danc 
ing-classes,  "welfare"  associations,  alumni  and  grad 
uate  clubs  of  schools  and  colleges,  and  dramatic  clubs; 
the  educational,  which  are  very  numerous,  reading 
circles,  literary  clubs  galore,  free  classes  in  chemis 
try,  French,  psychology,  philosophy,  etc.,  and  all  such 
organizations  as  the  Jewish  Culture  Club,  the  Young 
People's  Ethical  Society,  the  Longan  Parliamentary 
Class,  and  the  Industrial  and  Business  Women's  Edu 
cational  leagues.  Religious  bodies  are  parish  meet 
ings,  committees  of  mission  boards,  and  such  organi 
zations  as  the  Theosophical  Society;  charitable  or 


SOCIAL    CENTER    MOVEMENT  149 

civic  activities  include  the  National  Conference  of 
Day  Nurseries,  the  Central  Council  of  Civic  Agencies, 
the  W.C.T.U.,  playground  rehearsals  for  the  Child 
Welfare  Exhibit,  and  the  Business  Men's  Association ; 
and  the  Advertising  Men's  League ;  musical  organiza 
tions  embrace  St.  Paul's  Musical  Assembly,  the  Tues 
day  Choral  Club,  etc.  Among  exhibitions  are  local 
affairs  such  as  wild  flower  shows,  an  exhibit  of  bird- 
houses,  collections  from  the  Educational  Museum, 
the  Civil  League's  Municipal  Exhibit,  selected  screens 
from  the  Child  Welfare  Exhibit,  and  the  prize-winners 
from  the  St.  Louis  Art  Exhibit  held  in  the  art  room 
of  our  central  library.  Then  we  have  the  Queen  Hed- 
wig  Branch,  the  Clay  School  Picnic  Association,  the 
Aero  Club,  the  Lithuanian  Club,  the  Philotechne 
Club,  the  Fathers'  Club,  and  the  United  Spanish  War 
Veterans. 

I  trust  you  will  not  call  upon  me  to  explain  the 
objects  of  some  of  these,  as  such  a  demand  might 
cause  me  embarrassment — not  because  their  aims  are 
unworthy,  but  because  these  are  skilfully  obscured  by 
their  names.  If  anyone  believes  that  there  is  a  limit 
to  the  capacity  of  the  human  race  for  forming  groups 
and  subgroups  on  a  moment's  notice,  for  any  reason  or 
for  no  reason  at  all,  I  would  refer  him  to  our  assem 
bly  room  and  clubroom  records;  and  he  would  find,  I 
think,  that  these  are  typical  of  every  large  library  of 
fering  the  use  of  such  rooms  somewhat  "freely. 

It  will  be  noted  that  the  library  takes  no  part  in 
organizing  or  operating  any  of  these  activities;  it 
does  not  have  to  do  so. 

The  successful  leader  is  he  who  repairs  to  a  hill 
and  raises  his  standard,  knowing  that  at  sight  of  it 
followers  will  flock  around  him.  When  you  drop  a 
tiny  crystal  into  a  solution,  the  atoms  all  rush  to  it 


150  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

naturally  :  there  is  no  effort  or  compulsion  except  that 
of  the  aptitudes  that  their  Creator  has  implanted  in 
them.  So  it  is  with  all  centers,  business  or  religious 
or  social.  No  one  instituted  a  campaign  to  locate  the 
business  center  of  a  city  at  precisely  such  a  square  or 
corner.  Things  aggregate,  and  the  point  to  which  they 
tend  is  their  (enter;  they  make  it,  it  does  not  make 
them.  The  leader  on  a  hill  is  a  leader  because  he  has 
followers ;  without  them  lie  would  be  but  a  lone  warri 
or.  The  school  or  the  library  that  says  proudly  to  it 
self,  "Go  to;  I  will  be  a  social  center,"  may  find  itself 
in  the  same  lonely  position.  It  can  offer  an  opportun 
ity  :  that  is  all.  It  can  offer  houseroom  to  clubs,  or 
ganizations,  and  groups  of  all  kinds,  whether  perman 
ent  or  temporary,  large  or  small,  but  its  usefulness  as 
a  social  center  depends  largely  on  the  existence  of 
these  and  on  their  desire  for  a  meeting  place.  We 
have  in  St.  Louis  six  branch  libraries  with  assembly 
rooms  and  clubrooms — in  all  a  dozen  or  so.  I  have 
before  me  the  calendar  for  a  single  week  and  I  find  55 
engagements,  running  from  24  at  one  branch  down 
thru  13,  8,  6,  and  3  to  one.  If  I  had  before  me  only 
the  largest  number  I  should  conclude  that  branch  li 
braries  as  social  centers  were  a  howling  success;  if 
only  the  smallest,  I  should  say  that  they  were  dismal 
failures.  Why  the  difference?  For  the  same  reason 
that  the  leader  who  displays  his  standard  may  or  may 
not  be  surrounded  with  eager  "flocking"  followers. 
There  may  be  no  one  within  earshot,  or  they  may  have 
no  stomach  for -the  war,  or  they  may  not  be  interested 
in  the  cause  that  he  represents.  Or  again,  he  may  not 
shout  loud  or  persuasively  enough,  or  his  standard 
may  not  be  attractive  enough  in  form  or  color,  or 
mounted  on  a  sufficiently  high  staff. 

I  have  said  that  all  we  can  offer  is  opportunity ;  to 


SOCIAL    CENTER    MOVEMENT  151 

change  our  figure,  we  can  furnish  the  drinking-foun- 
tain — thirst  must  bring  the  horse  to  it.  But  we  must 
not  forget  that  we  offer  our  opportunity  in  vain  un 
less  we  are  sure  that  everyone  who  might  grasp  it 
realizes  our  offer  and  what  it  means. 

Here  is  the  chance  for  personal  endeavor.  If  the 
young  people  in  a  neighborhood  continue  to  hold 
their  social  meetings  over  a  saloon  when  the  branch 
library  or  the  school  is  perfectly  willing  to  offer  its 
assembly  room,  it  is  pretty  certain  that  they  do  not 
understand  that  offer,  or  that  they  mistrust  its  sin 
cerity,  or  that  there  is  something  wrong  that  might  be 
remedied  by  personal  effort.  In  the  one  of  our 
branches  that  is  most  used  by  organizations  there  is 
this  personal  touch.  But  I  should  hesitate  to  say 
that  the  others  do  not  have  it  too.  There  are  plenty 
of  organizations  near  this  busiest  library  and  there 
are  no  other  good  places  for  them  to  meet.  In  the 
neighborhood  of  some  other  branches  there  are  other 
meeting-places,  and  elsewhere,  perhaps,  the  social  in 
stinct  is  not  so  strong,  or  at  any  rate  the  effort  to  or 
ganize  is  lacking.  Should  the  librarian  step  out  and 
attempt  to  stimulate  this  social  instinct  and  to  guide 
this  organizing  effort?  There  is  room  for  difference 
of  opinion  here. 

Personally  I  think  that  he  should  not  do  it  direct 
ly  and  officially  as  a  librarian.  He  may  do  it  quietly 
and  unobtrusively  like  any  other  private  citizen,  but 
he  needs  all  his  efforts,  all  his  influence,  to  bring  the 
book  and  the  reader  together  in  his  community. 
Sometimes  by  doing  this  lie  can  be  doing  the  other 
too,  and  he  can  always  do  it  vicariously.  He  should 
bear  in  mind  that  the  successful  man  is  not  he  who 
does  everything  himself,  but  he  who  can  induce  others 
to  do  things — to  do  them  in  his  way  and  to  direct  them 


152  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

toward  his  ends.  Even  in  the  most  sluggish,  the  most 
indifferent  community  there  are  these  potential  work 
ers  with  enthusiasms  that  need  only  to  be  awakened 
to  be  let  loose  for  good.  The  magic  key  is  often  in 
the  librarian's  girdle,  and  his  free  offer  of  house  room 
and  sympathy,  with  good  literature  thrown  in,  will 
always  be  of  powerful  assistance  in  this  kind  of  effort. 
He  will  seldom  need  to  do  more  than  to  make  clear 
the  existence  jnid  the  nature  of  the  opportunity  that 
he  offers.  I  know  that  there  are  some  librarians  and 
many  more  teachers  who  hesitate  to  open  their  doors 
in  any  such  way  as  this;  Avho  are  afraid  that  the  op 
portunities  offered  will  be  misused  or  that  the  activi 
ties  so  sheltered  will  be  misjudged  by  the  public.  It 
has  shocked  some  persons  that  a  young  people's  danc 
ing-class  lias  been  held,  under  irreproachable  aus 
pices,  in  one  of  our  branch  libraries;  others  have  been 
grieved  to  see  that  political  ward  meetings  have  taken 
place  in  them,  and  that  some  rather  radical  political 
theories  have  been  debated  there.  These  persons  for 
get  that  a  library  never  takes  sides.  It  places  on  its 
shelves  books  on  the  Civil  War  from  the  standpoint  of 
both  North  and  South,  histories  of  the  great  relig 
ious  controversies  by  both  Catholics  and  Protestants, 
ideas  and  theories  in  science  and  philosophy  from  all 
sides  and  at  all  angles.  It  may  give  room  at  one  time 
to  a  young  people's  dancing-class  and  at  another  to 
a  meeting  of  persons  who  condemn  dancing.  Its 
walls  may  echo  one  day  to  the  praises  of  our  tariff 
system  and  on  another  to  fierce  denunciations  of  it. 

These  things  are  all  legitimate  and  it  is  better 
that  they  should  take  place  in  a  library  or  a  school 
building  than  in  a  saloon  or  even  in  a  grocery  store. 
The  influence  of  environment  is  gently  pervasive.  I 
may  be  wrong,  but  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  it  is 


SOCIAL    CENTER    MOVEMENT  153 

easier  to  be  a  gentleman  in  a  library,  whether  in  so 
cial  meeting  or  in  political  debate,  than  it  is  in  some 
other  places.  In  one  of  our  branches  there  meets  a 
club  of  men  who  would  be  termed  anarchists  by  some 
people.  The  branch  librarian  assures  me  that  the 
brand  of  anarchism  that  they  profess  has  grown  per 
ceptibly  milder  since  they  have  met  in  the  library. 
It  is  getting  to  be  literary,  academic,  philosophic. 
Nourished  in  a  saloon,  with  a  little  injudicious  repres 
sion,  it  might  perhaps  have  borne  fruit  of  bombs  and 
dynamite. 

In  this  catholicity  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the 
library  as  an  educational  institution  is  a  step  ahead  of 
the  school.  Most  teachers  would  resent  the  imputa 
tion  of  parti sanship  on  the  part  of  the  school,  and 
yet  it  is  surely  partisan — in  some  ways  rightly  and  in 
evitably  so.  One  cannot  well  explain  both  sides  of 
any  question  to  a  child  of  six  and  leave  its  decision  to 
his  judgment.  This  is  obvious;  and  yet  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  there  is  one-sided  teaching  of  children 
who  are  at  least  old  enough  to  know  that  there  is 
another  side,  and  that  the  one-sided  teaching  of  two- 
sided  subjects  might  be  postponed  in  some  cases  until 
two-sided  information  would  be  possible  and  proper. 
Where  a  child  is  taught  one  side  and  finds  out  later 
that  there  is  another,  his  resentment  is  apt  to  be  bit 
ter;  it  spoils  the  educational  effect  of  much  that  he 
was  taught  and  injures  the  influence  of  the  institu 
tion  that  taught  him.  My  resentment  is  still  strong 
against  the  teaching  that  hid  from  me  the  southern 
viewpoint  concerning  slavery  and  secession,  the  Cath 
olic  viewpoint  of  what  we  Protestants  call  the  Refor 
mation — dozens  of  things  omitted  from  textbooks  on 
dozens  of  subjects  because  they  did  not  happen  to  meet 
the  approval  of  the  textbook  compiler.  I  am  no  less 


154  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHE  LI1 

an  opponent  of  slavery — I  am  no  less  a  Protestant — 
because  I  know  the  other  side,  but  I  think  I  am  a  bet 
ter  man  for  knowing  it,  and  I  think  it  a  thousand 
pities  that  there  are  thousands  of  our  fellow  citizens, 
on  all  sides  of  all  possible  lines,  from  whom  our  edu 
cative  processes  have  hid  even  the  fact  that  there  is 
another  side.  This  question,  as  I  have  said,  does  not 
affect  the  library,  and  fortunately  need  not  affect  it 
And  as  we  are  necessarily  two-sided  in  our  book  mate 
rial  so  we  can  open  our  doors  to  free  social  or  neigh 
borhood  use  without  bothering  our  heads  about  wheth 
er  the  users  are  Catholics,  Protestants,  or  Jews; 
Democrats,  Republicans,  or  Socialists;  Christian  Sci 
entists  or  suffragists.  The  library  hands  our  suffrage 
and  anti-suffrage  literature  to  its  users  with  the  same 
smile,  and  if  it  hands  the  anti-suffrage  books  to  the 
suffragist,  and  vice  versa,  both  sides  are  certainly  the 
better  for  it, 

I  have  tried  to  make  it  clear  in  what  I  have  said 
that  in  this  matter  of  social  activity,  public  institu 
tions  should  go  as  far  as  they  can  in  furnishing  facil 
ities  without  taking  upon  themselves  the  burden  of 
administration.  I  believe  fully  in  municipal  owner 
ship  of  all  kinds  of  utilities,  but  rarely  in  municipal 
operation.  Municipal  ownership  safeguards  the  city, 
and  private  or  corporate  operation  avoids  the  numer 
ous  objections  to  close  municipal  control  of  detail. 
So  the  library  authorities  may  retain  sufficient  con 
trol  of  these  social  activities  by  the  power  that  they 
have  of  admitting  them  to  the  parts  of  the  buildings 
provided  for  them,  or  of  excluding  them  at  any  time. 
These  activities  themselves  are  better  managed  by  vol 
untary  bodies,  and,  as  I  have  said,  there  is  no  indica 
tion  that  the  formation  of  such  bodies  is  on  the  wane. 
The  establishment  and  operation  of  a  musical  or  ath- 


SOCIAL    CENTER    MOVEMENT  155 

letic  club,  a  debating  society,  or  a  Boy  Scouts  com 
pany,  are  surely  quite  as  educational  as  the  activi 
ties  themselves  in  which  their  members  engage.  Do 
not  let  us  arrogate  to  ourselves  such  opportunities  as 
these.  I  should  be  inclined  to  take  this  attitude  also 
with  regard  to  the  public  playgrounds,  were  they  not 
somewhat  without  the  province  of  this  paper;  and  I 
take  it  very  strongly  with  regard  to  the  public  school. 
Throw  open  the  school  buildings  as  soon  as  you  can, 
and  as  freely  as  you  can  to  every  legitimate  form  of 
social  activity,  but  let  your  relationship  to  this  activ 
ity  be  like  that  of  the  center  to  the  circle — in  it  and 
of  it,  but  embracing  no  part  of  its  areal  content.  So, 
I  am  convinced,  will  it  be  best  for  all  of  us — for  our 
selves,  the  administrators  of  public  property,  and 
for  the  public,  the  owning  body  which  is  now  demand 
ing  that  it  should  not  be  barred  out  by  its  servants 
from  that  property's  freest  and  fullest  use. 


THE  SYSTEMATIZATION  OF  VIOLENCE 

The  peace  propaganda  has  suffered  much  from  the 
popular  impression  that  many  of  those  engaged  in  it 
are  impractical  enthusiasts  who  are  assuming  the 
possibility  of  doing  away  with  passions  and  preju 
dices  incident  to  our  very  humanity,  and  of  bringing 
about  an  ideal  reign  of  love  and  good  will.  Whether 
this  impression  is  or  is  not  justified  we  need  not  now 
inquire.  It  is  the  impression  itself  that  is  injuring 
the  cause  of  peace,  and  will  continue  to  injure  it  until 
it  is  removed. 

It  may  at  least  be  lessened  by  allowing  the  mind 
to  dwell  for  a  time  on  another  aspect  of  the  subject  in 
which  the  regime  of  peace  that  would  follow  the  dis 
continuance  of  all  settlement  of  disputes  by  violence 
will  appear  to  consist  not  so  much  in  the  total  disap 
pearance  of  violence  from  the  earth  as  in  the  use  of 
it  for  a  different  purpose,  namely,  the  preservation  of 
the  peaceful  status  quo,  by  a  systematic  and  lawful 
use  of  force,  or  at  any  rate,  the  readiness  to  employ 
it. 

A  state  of  peace,  whether  between  individuals  or 
nations,  whether  without  or  within  a  regime  of  law, 
always  partakes  of  the  nature  of  an  armed  truce: 
under  one  regime,  however,  the  arms  are  borne  by  the 
possible  contestants  themselves;  under  the  other,  by 
the  community  whose  members  they  are.  If  there  is 
a  resort  to  arms,  violence  ensues  under  both  regimes ; 
in  both  cases  it  tends  ultimately  to  restore  peace,  but 
the  action  is  more  certain  and  more  systematic  when 
the  violence  is  exerted  by  the  community. 


158  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

These  laws  may  apply  indifferently  to  a  commun 
ity  of  individuals  or  to  one  of  nations.  The  most 
cogent  and  the  most  valid  argument  at  the  disposal 
of  the  peace  advocate  is  the  fact  that  we  no  longer 
allow  the  individual  to  take  the  law  into  his  own 
hand,  and  that  logically  we  should  equally  prohibit 
the  nation  from  doing  so.  This  is  unanswerable,  but 
its  force  has  been  greatly  weakened  by  the  assump 
tion,  which  it  requires  no  great  astuteness  to  find  un 
warranted,  that  the  settlement  of  individual  quarrels 
by  individual  force  has  resulted  from — or  at  least  re 
sulted  in — the  discontinuance  of  violence  altogether, 
or  in  the  dawn  of  a  general  era  of  good-will,  man  to 
man.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  very  doubtful  whether 
there  is  less  violence  to-day  than  there  would  be  if  the 
operation  of  law  were  suspended  altogether;  the  dif 
ference,  is  that  the  violence  has  shifted  its  incidence 
and  altered  its  aim — it  is  civic  and  social  and  no 
longer  individual. 

If  we  are  to  introduce  the  regime  of  law  among 
nations  as  among  individuals,  our  first  step  must  be 
similarly  to  shift  the  incidence  of  violence.  In  so 
doing  we  may  not  decrease  it,  we  may,  indeed,  in 
crease  it — but  we  shall  none  the  less  be  taking  that 
step  in  the  only  possible  direction  to  achieve  our  pur 
pose. 

Among  individuals,  custom,  crystallizing  into 
law^,  generally  precedes  the  enforcement  of  that  law 
by  the  community.  Hence,  a  somewhat  elaborate 
code  may  exist  side  by  side  with  the  settlement  of  dis 
putes,  under  that  code,  by  personal  combat.  We  have 
among  nations  such  a  code,  and  we  yet  admit  the  set 
tlement  of  disputes  by  war,  because  the  incidence  of 
violence  has  not  yet  completely  shifted.  We  have 
established  a  tribunal  to  act,  in  certain  cases,  on  be 
half  of  the  community  of  nations,  but  we  have  not 


SYSTEMATIZATION    OF    VIOLENCE      159 

yet  given  that  tribunal  complete  jurisdiction  and  we 
have  given  it  no  power  whatever  to  enforce  its  de 
crees.  It  is  on  this  latter  point  that  I  desire  to  dwell. 
In  a  community  of  individuals,  there  are  two  ways  of 
using  violence  to  enforce  law — by  the  professional 
police  force  and  by  the  posse  of  citizens.  The  former 
is  more  effective,  but  the  latter  is  often  readier  and 
more  certain  in  particular  instances,  especially  in 
primitive  communities.  To  give  it  force  we  must 
have  readiness  on  the  part  of  every  citizen  to  respond 
to  a  call  from  the  proper  officer,  and  ability  to  do  ef 
fective  service,  especially  by  the  possession  of  arms 
and  skill  in  their  use.  These  requisites  are  not  gen 
erally  found  in  more  advanced  communities. 

In  like  manner,  the  decrees  of  an  international 
tribunal  might  be  enforced  either  by  the  creation  of 
an  international  army  or  by  calling  upon  as  many  of 
the  nations  as  necessary  to  aid  in  coercing  the  non- 
law-abiding  member  of  the  international  community. 
Each  nation  is  already  armed  and  ready. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  ultimate  possi 
bility  of  an  international  army,  it  must  be  evident 
that  the  principle  of  the  posse  must  serve  us  at  the 
outset.  An  international  army  would  always  consist 
in  part  of  members  of  the  nation  to  be  coerced,  where 
as,  in  selecting  a  posse  those  furthest  in  race  and  in 
sympathy  from  the  offender  might  always  be  chosen, 
just  as  members  of  a  hostile  clan  would  make  up  the 
best  posse  to  arrest  a  Highlander  for  sheep-stealing. 

Moreover,  the  posse  has  been  used  internationally 
more  than  once,  as  when  decrees  have  been  pro 
nounced  by  a  general  European  Congress  and  some 
particular  nation  or  nations  have  been  charged'  with 
their  execution. 

When  a  frontier  community  that  has  been  a  law 
unto  itself  gets  its  first  sheriff,  the  earliest  visible  re- 


160  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

suit  is  not  impossibly  a  sudden  increase,  instead  of  a 
decrease,  of  violence.  There  is  a  war  of  the  commun 
ity,  represented  by  the  sheriff  and  the  good  citizens, 
against  all  the  bad  ones.  Even  so  it  may  be  expected 
that  among  the  first  results  of  an  effective  agreement 
to  enforce  the  decrees  of  an  international  tribunal, 
would  be  an  exceptionally  great  and  violent  war. 
Sooner  or  later  some  nation  would  be  sure  to  take 
issue  with  an  unpopular  decree  and  refuse  to  obey  it. 
This  would  probably  be  one  of  the  larger  and  more 
powerful  nations,  for  a  weaker  power  would  not  pro 
ceed  to  such  lengths  in  protest. 

Not  improbably  other  nations  might  join  the  pro 
testing  power.  The  result  would  be  a  war;  it  might 
even  be  the  world  war  that  we  have  been  fearing  for 
a  generation.  It  might  conceivably  be  the  greatest 
and  the  bloodiest  war  that  the  world  has  yet  seen. 
Yet  it  would  be  far  the  most  glorious  Avar  of  history, 
for  it  would  be  a  struggle  on  behalf  of  law  and  order 
in  the  community  of  nations — a  fight  to  uphold  that 
authority  by  whose  exercise  alone  may  peace  be  as 
sured  to  the  world.  The  man  who  shudders  at  the 
prospect  of  such  a  war,  who  wants  peace,  but  is  un 
willing  to  fight  for  it,  should  cease  his  efforts  on  be 
half  of  a  universal  agreement  among  nations,  for 
there  is  no  general  agreement  without  power  to  quell 
dissension. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  details  of  an 
international  agreement  to  enforce  the  decrees  of  an 
international  tribunal.  It  may  merely  be  said  that  if 
the  most  powerful  and  intelligent  communities  of 
men  that  have  ever  existed  cannot  devise  machinery 
to  do  what  puny  individuals  have  long  been  success 
fully  accomplishing,  they  had  better  disband  and 
coalesce  in  universal  anarchy. 

My  object  here  is  neither  to  propose  plans  nor  to 


SYSTEMATIZATIOK    OF    VIOLENCE     161 

discuss  details,  but  merely  to  point  out  that  not  the 
abandonment,  but  the  systematization  of  violence  is 
the  goal  of  a  rational  peace  propaganda,  and  that 
when  this  is  once  acknowledged  and  universally  real 
ized,  an  important  step  will  have  been  taken  toward 
winning  over  a  class  of  persons  who  now  oppose  a 
world-peace  as  impractical  and  impossible. 

These  persons  disapprove  of  disarmament:  and 
from  the  point  of  view  here  advocated,  a  general  dis 
armament  would  be  the  last  thing  to  be  desired.  The 
possible  member  of  a  posse  must  bear  arms  to  be  ef 
fective.  Armaments  may  have  to  be  limited  and  con 
trolled  by  international  decree,  but  to  disarm  a  na 
tion  would  be  as  criminal  and  foolish  as  it  would  be 
to  take  away  all  weapons  from  the  law-abiding  citi 
zens  of  a  mining  town  as  a  preliminary  to  calling 
upon  them  to  assist  in  the  arrest  of  a  notorious  band 
of  outlaws. 

Again :  a  common  objection  to  the  peace  propa 
ganda  is  that  without  war  we  shall  have  none  of  the 
heroic  virtues  that  war  calls  into  being.  This  objec 
tion  fails  utterly  when  we  consider  that  what  we 
shall  get  under  a  proper  international  agreement  is 
not  the  abolition  of  war,  but  simply  an  assurance  that 
when  there  is  a  war  it  will  be  one  in  which  every  good 
citizen  can  take  at  once  the  part  of  international  law 
and  order — a  contest  between  the  law  and  the  law 
breaker,  and  not  one  in  which  both  contestants  are 
equally  lawless.  Thus  the  profession  of  arms  will 
still  be  an  honorable  one — it  will,  in  fact,  be  much 
more  honorable  than  it  is  to-day,  when  it  may  at  any 
moment  be  prostituted  to  the  service  of  greed  or  com 
mercialism. 


THE  ART  OF  RE-READING 

"I  have  nothing  to  read,"  said  a  man  to  me  once. 
"But  your  house  seems  to  be  filled  with  books."  "O, 
yes;  but  I've  read  them  already."  AVhat  should  we 
think  of  a  man  who  should  complain  that  lie  had  no 
friends,  when  his  house  was  thronged  daily  with 
guests,  simply  because  he  had  seen  and  talked  with 
them  all  once  before?  Such  a  man  has  either  chosen 
badly,  or  he  is  himself  at  fault.  "Hold  fast  that 
which  is  good"  says  the  Scripture.  Do  not  taste  it 
once  and  throw  it  away.  To  get  at  the  root  of  this 
matter  we  must  go  farther  back  than  literature  and 
inquire  what  it  has  in  common  with  all  other  forms  of 
art  to  compel  our  love  and  admiration.  Now,  a  work 
of  art  differs  from  any  other  result  of  human  en 
deavor  in  this — that  its  effect  depends  chiefly  on  the 
way  in  w^hich  it  is  made  and  only  secondarily  upon 
what  it  is  or  what  it  represents.  Were  this  not  true, 
all  statues  of  Apollo  or  Venus  would  have  the  same 
art-value;  and  you  or  I,  if  we  could  find  a  tree  and  a 
hill  that  Corot  had  painted,  would  be  able  to  produce 
a  picture  as  charming  to  the  beholder  as  his. 

The  way  in  which  a  thing  is  done  is,  of  course, 
always  important,  but  its  importance  outside  of  the 
sphere  of  art  differs  from  that  within.  The  way  in 
which  a  machine  is  constructed  makes  it  good  or  bad, 
but  the  thing  that  is  aimed  at  here  is  the  useful  work 
ing  of  the  machine,  toward  which  all  the  skill  of  the 
maker  is  directed.  What  the  artist  aims  at  is  not  so 
much  to  produce  a  likeness  of  a  god  or  a  picture  of  a 
tree,  as  to  produce  certain  effects  in  the  person  who 
looks  at  his  complete  work;  and  this  he  does  by  the 


LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

way  in  which  he  performs  it.  The  fact  that  a  paint 
ing  represents  certain  trees  and  hills  is  here  only 
secondary;  the  primary  fact  is  what  the  artist  has 
succeeded  in  making  the  on-looker  feel. 

While  Sorolla  is  painting  a  group  of  children  on 
the  beach,  I  may  take  a  kodak  picture  of  the  same 
group.  My  photograph  may  be  a  better  likeness  than 
Sorolla' s  picture,  but  it  has  no  art- value.  Why? 
Because  it  was  made  mechanically,  whereas  Sorolla 
put  into  his  picture  something  of  himself,  making  it 
a  unique  thing,  incapable  of  imitation  or  of  reproduc 
tion. 

The  man  who  has  a  message,  one  of  those  perva 
sive,  compelling  messages  that  are  worth  while,  nat 
urally  turns  to  art.  He  chooses  his  subject  not  as  an 
end,  but  as  a  vehicle,  and  he  makes  it  speak  his  mes 
sage  by  his  method  of  treatment,  conveying  it  to  his 
public  more  or  less  successfully  in  the  measure  of  his 
skill. 

We  have  been  speaking  of  the  representative  arts 
of  painting  and  sculpture,  but  the  same  is  true  of  art 
in  any  form.  In  music,  not  a  representative  art,  in 
spite  of  the  somewhat  grotesque  claims  of  so-called 
program  music,  the  method  of  the  composer  is  every 
thing,  or  at  least  his  subject  is  so  vague  and  imma 
terial  that  no  one  would  think  of  exalting  it  as  an  end 
in  itself.  There  is,  however,  an  art  in  which  the  sub 
ject  stands  forth  so  prominently  that  even  those  who 
love  the  art  itself  are  continually  in  danger  of  forget 
ting  'the  subject's  secondary  character.  I  mean  the 
art  of  literature.  Among  the  works  of  written  speech 
the  boundaries  of  art  are  much  more  ill-defined  than 
they  are  elsewhere.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  as  much 
difference  between  Shelley's  "Ode  to  a  Skylark"  and 
Todhunter's  "Trigonometry"  as  there  is  between  the 
Venus  de  Milo  and  a  battleship;  and  I  conceive  that 


ART    OF    RE-READING  165 

the  difference  is  also  of  precisely  the  same  kind,  being 
that  by  which,  as  we  have  seen  above,  we  may  always 
discriminate  between  a  work  of  art  and  one  of  utility. 
But  where  art-value  and  utility  are  closely  combined, 
as  they  are  most  frequently  in  literature,  it  is,  I  be 
lieve,  more  difficult  to  divide  them  mentally  and  to 
dwell  on  their  separate  characteristics,  than  where 
the  work  is  a  concrete  object.  This  is  why  we  hear  so 
many  disputes  about  whether  a  given  work  does  or 
does  not  belong  to  the  realm  of  "pure  literature,"  and 
it  is  also  the  reason  why,  as  I  have  said,  some,  even 
among  those  who  love  literature,  are  not  always 
ready  to  recognize  its  nature  as  an  art,  or  mistakenlv 
believe  that  in  so  far  as  its  art-value  is  concerned,  the 
subject  portrayed  is  of  primary  importance — is  an 
aim  in  itself  instead  of  being  a  mere  vehicle  for  the 
conveyance  of  an  impression. 

Take,  if  you  please,  works  which  were  intended  b> 
their  authors  as  works  of  utility,  but  have  survived  as 
works  of  art  in  spite  of  themselves,  such  as  Walton's 
"Compleat  Angler"  and  White's  "Natural  History  of 
Selborne."  Will  anyone  maintain  that  the  subject- 
matter  of  those  books  has  much  to  do  with  their 
preservation,  or  with'  the  estimation  in  which  they 
are  now  held?  Nay;  we  may  even  be  so  bold  as  to 
enter  the  field  of  fiction  and  to  assert  that  those  fic 
tional  works  that  have  purely  literary  value  are  loved 
not  for  the  story  they  tell,  but  for  the  way  in  which 
the  author  tells  it  and  for  the  effect  that  he  thereby 
produces  on  the  reader. 

I  conceive  that  pure  literature  is  an  art,  subject 
to  the  rules  that  govern  all  art,  and  that  its  value  de 
pends  primarily  on  the  effect  produced  on  the  reader 
—the  message  conveyed — by  the  way  in  which  the 
writer  has  done  his  work,  the  subject  chosen  being 
only  his  vehicle.  Where  a  man  who  has  something  to 


IGti  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

say  looks  about  for  means  to  say  it  worthily,  he  may 
select  a  tale,  a  philosophical  disquisition,  a  familiar 
essay,  a  drama  or  a  lyric  poem.  He  may  choose  badly 
or  well,  but  in  any  case  it  is  his  message  that  matters. 

My  excuse  for  dwelling  on  this  matter  must  be 
that  unless  I  have  carried  you  with  me  thus  far  what 
I  am  about  to  say  will  have  no  meaning,  and  I  had 
best  fold  my  papers,  make  my  bow,  and  conclude  an 
unprofitable  business.  For  my  subject  is  re-reading, 
the  repetition  of  a  message ;  and  the  message  that  we 
would  willingly  hear  repeated  is  not  that  of  utility 
but  of  emotion.  It  is  the  word  that  thrills  the  heart, 
nerves  the  arm,  and  puts  new  life  into  the  veins,  not 
that  which  simply  conveys  information.  The  former 
will  produce  its  effect  again  and  again,  custom  can 
not  stale  it.  The  latter,  once  delivered,  has  done  its 
work.  I  see  two  messengers  approaching ;  one,  whom 
I  have  sent  to  a  library  to  ascertain  the  birth-date  of 
Oliver  Cromwell,  tells  me  what  it  is  and  receives  my 
thanks.  The  other  tells  me  that  one  dear  to  my  heart, 
long  lying  at  death's  door,  is  recovering.  My  blood 
courses  through  my  ve^ns;  my  nerves  tingle;  joy  suf 
fuses  me  where  gloom  reigned  before.  I  cry  out;  I 
beg  the  bearer  of  good  tidings*  to  tell  them  again  and 
again;  I  keep  him  by  me,  so  that  I  may  ask  him  a 
thousand  questions,  bringing  out  his  message  in  a 
thousand  variant  forms.  But  do  I  turn  to  the  other 
and  say,  "O,  that  blessed  date!  was  Cromwell  truly 
born  thereon?  Let  me,  I  pray,  hear  you  recite  it 
again  and  again !"  I  trow,  not. 

The  message  that  we  desire  to  hear  again  is  the 
one  that  produces  its  effect  again  and  again ;  and  that 
is  the  message  of  feeling,  the  message  of  art — not  that 
of  mere  utility.  This  is  so  true  that  I  conceive  we 
may  use  it  as  a  test  of  art- value.  The  great  works  of 
literature  do  not  lose  their  effect  on  a  single  reading. 


ART    OF    RE-READING  167 

One  makes  response  to  them  the  hundredth  time  as 
he  did  the  first.  Their  appeal  is  so  compelling  that 
there  is  no  denying  it — no  resisting  it.  There  are 
snatches  of  poetry — and  of  prose,  too — that  we  have 
by  heart;  that  we  murmur  to  ourselves  again  and 
again,  sure  that  the  response  which  never  failed  will 
come  again,  thrilling  the  whole  organism  with  its 
pathos,  uplifting  us  with  the  nobility  of  its  appeal, 
warming  us  with  its  humor.  There  is  a  little  se 
quence  of  homely  verse  that  never  fails  to  bring  the 
tears  to  my  eyes.  I  have  tested  myself  with  it  under 
the  most  unfavorable  circumstances.  In  the  midst  of 
business,  amid  social  jollity,  in  the  mental  dullness  of 
fatigue,  I  have  stopped  and  repeated  to  myself  those 
three  verses.  So  quickly  acts  the  magic  of  the  au 
thor's  skill  that  the  earlier  verses  grip  the  fibers  of 
my  mind  and  twist  them  in  such  fashion  that  I  feel 
the  pathos  of  the  last  lines  just  as  I  felt  them  for  the 
first  time,  years  ago.  You  might  all  tell  similar 
stories.  I  believe  that  this  is  a  characteristic  of  good 
literature,  and  that  all  of  it  will  bear  reading,  and  re 
reading,  and  reading  again. 

But  I  hear  someone  say,  "Do  you  mean  to  tell  me 
that  those  three  little  verses  that  bring  the  tears  to 
your  eyes,  will  bring  them  also  to  mine  and  my 
neighbor's?  I  might  listen  to  them  appreciatively  but 
dry-eyed;  my  neighbor  might  not  care  for  them 
enough  to  re-read  them  once.  All  about  us  we  see 
this  personal  equation  in  the  appreciation  of  litera 
ture.  Unless  you  are  prepared,  then,  to  maintain 
that  literature  may  be  good  for  one  and  bad  for  an 
other,  your  contention  will  scarcely  hold  water." 

Even  so,  brother.  The  messenger  who  told  me  of 
the  safety  of  my  dear  one  did  not  thrill  your  heart  as 
he  did  mine.  She  was  dear  to  me,  not  to  you,  and  the 
infinitely  delicate  yet  powerful  chain  of  conditions 


168  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

and  relations  that  operated  between  the  messenger's 
voice  and  my  emotional  nature  did  not  connect  him 
with  yours.  Assuredly,  the  message  that  reaches  one 
man  may  not  reach  another.  It  may  even  reach  a 
man  in  his  youth  and  fall  short  in  manhood,  or  vice 
versa.  It  may  be  good  for  him  and  inoperative  on  all 
the  rest  of  the  world.  We  estimate  literature,  it  is 
true,  by  the  universality  of  its  appeal  or  by  the  char 
acter  of  the  persons  whom  alone  that  appeal  reaches. 
The  message  of  literature  as  art  may  thus  be  to  the 
crowd  or  to  a  select  few.  I  could  even  imagine  intel 
lect  and  feeling  of  such  exquisite  fineness,  such 
acknowledged  superiority,  that  appeal  to  it  alone 
might  be  enough  to  fix  the  status  of  a  work  of  art, 
though  it  might  leave  all  others  cold.  Still,  in  gen 
eral  I  believe,  that  the  greatest  literature  appeals 
to  the  greatest  number  and  to  the  largest  number  of 
types.  I  believe  that  there  are  very  few  persons  to 
whom  Shakespeare,  properly  presented,  will  not  ap 
peal.  In  him,  nevertheless,  the  learned  and  those  of 
taste  also  delight.  There  are  authors  like  Walter 
Pater  who  are  a  joy  to  the  few  but  do  not  please  the 
many.  There  are  others  galore,  whom  perhaps  it 
would  be  invidious  to  name,  who  inspire  joy  in  the 
multitude  but  only  distaste  in  the  more  discriminat 
ing.  We  place  Pater  above  these,  just  as  we  should 
always  put  quality  above  quantity;  but  I  place 
Shakespeare  vastly  higher,  because  his  appeal  is  to 
the  few  and  the  many  at  once. 

But  we  must,  I  think,  acknowledge  that  an  author 
whose  value  may  not  appeal  to  others  may  be  great  to 
one  reader;  that  his  influence  on  that  reader  may  be 
as  strong  for  good  as  if  it  were  universal  instead  of 
unique.  We  may  not  place  such  a  writer  in  the  Wal- 
halla,  but  I  beseech  you,  do  not  let  us  tear  him  rudely 
from  the  one  or  two  to  whom  he  is  good  and  great. 


AKT    OF    KE-KEADING  160 

Do  not  lop  off.  the  clinging  arms  at  the  elbow,  but 
rather  skilfully  present  some  other  object  of  adora 
tion  to  the  intent  that  they  may  voluntarily  untwine 
and  enfold  this  new  object  more  worthily. 

The  man  wrho  desires  to  own  books  but  who  can 
afford  only  a  small  and  select  library  can  not  do  bet 
ter  than  to  make  his  selection  on  this  basis — to  get 
together  a  collection  of  well-loved  books  any  one  of 
which  would  give  him  pleasure  in  re-reading.  Why 
should  a  man  harbor  in  his  house  a  book  that  he  has 
read  once  and  never  cares  to  read  again?  Why 
should  he  own  one  that  he  will  never  care  to  read  at 
all?  W^e  are  not  considering  the  books  of  the  great 
collectors,  coveted  for  their  rarity  or  their  early 
dates,  for  their  previous  ownership  or  the  beauty  of 
their  binding — for  any  reason  except  the  one  that 
makes  them  books  rather  than  curiosities.  These  col 
lections  are  not  libraries  in  the  intellectual  or  the  lit 
erary  sense.  Three  well  thumbed  volumes  in  the  attic 
of  one  who  loves  them  are  a  better  library  for  him 
than  those  on  which  Pierpont  Morgan  spent  his  mil 
lions. 

This  advice,  it  will  be  noted,  implies  that  the  man 
has  an  opportunity  to  read  the  book  before  he  decides 
whether  to  buy  it  or  not.  Here  is  where  the  Public 
Library  comes  in.  Some  regard  the  Public  Library 
as  an  institution  to  obviate  all  necessity  of  owning 
books.  It  should  rather  be  regarded  from  our  present 
standpoint  as  an  institution  to  enable  readers  to  own 
the  books  that  they  need — to  survey  the  field  and 
make  therefrom  a  proper  and  well-considered  selec 
tion.  That  it  has  acted  so  in  the  past,  none  may 
doubt;  it  is  the  business  of  librarians  to  see  that  this 
function  is  emphasized  in  the  future.  The  bookseller 
and  the  librarian  are  not  rivals,  but  co-workers.  Li 
brarians  complain  of  the  point  of  view  of  those  pnb- 


170  LIBRABIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

lishers  and  dealers  who  regard  every  library  user  as 
a  lost  customer.  He  is  rather,  they  say,  in  many 
cases  a  customer  won — a  non-reader  added  to  the 
reading  class — a  possible  purchaser  of  books.  But 
have  not  librarians  shared  somewhat  this  mistaken 
and  intolerant  attitude?  How  often  do  we  urge  our 
readers  to  become  book-owners?  How  often  do  we 
give  them  information  and  aid  directed  toward  this 
end?  The  success  of  the  Christmas  book  exhibitions 
held  in  many  libraries  should  be  a  lesson  to  us.  The 
lists  issued  in  connection  with  these  almost  always 
include  prices,  publishers'  names,  and  other  informa 
tion  intended  especially  for  the  would-be  purchaser. 
But  why  should  we  limit  our  efforts  to  the  holiday 
season?  True,  every  librarian  does  occasionally  re 
spond  to  requests  for  advice  in  book-selection  and 
book-purchase,  but  the  library  is  not  yet  recognized 
as  the  great  testing  field  of  the  would-be  book  owner ; 
the  librarian  is  not  yet  hailed  as  the  community's  ex 
pert  adviser  in  the  selection  and  purchase  of  books, 
as  well  as  its  book  guardian  and  book  distributor. 
That  this  may  be  and  should  be,  I  believe.  It  will  be 
if  the  librarian  wills  it. 

Are  we  straying  from  our  subject?  No ;  for  from 
our  present  standpoint  a  book  bought  is  a  book  re 
read.  My  ideal  private  library  is  a  room,  be  it  large 
or  small,  lined  with  books,  every  one  of  which  is  the 
owner's  familiar  friend,  some  almost  known  by  heart, 
others  re-read  many  times,  others  still  waiting  to  be 
re-read. 

But  how  about  the  man  whose  first  selection  for 
this  intimate  personal  group  would  be  a  complete  set 
of  the  works  of  George  Ade?  Well,  if  that  is  his  taste, 
let  his  library  reflect  it.  Let  a  man  be  himself.  That 
there  is  virtue  in  merely  surrounding  oneself  with  the 
great  masters  of  literature  all  unread  and  unloved,  I 


ART    OF    RE-READING  171 

can    not    see.     Better  acknowledge  your   poor    taste 
than  be  a  hypocrite. 

The  librarian  can  not  force  the  classics  down  the 
unwilling  throats  of  those  who  do  not  care  for  them 
and  are  perhaps  unfitted  to  appreciate  them.     There 
has  been  entirely  too  much  of  this  already  and  it  has 
resulted  disastrously.     Surely,  a  sane  via  media  is 
possible,  and  we  may  agree  that  a  man  will  never  like 
Eschylus,  without  assuring  him  that  Eschylus  is  an 
out-of-date  old  fogy,  while  on  the  other  hand  we  may 
acknowledge    the    greatness    of  Homer    and    Milton 
without  trying  to  force  them  upon  unwilling  and  in 
competent  readers.     After  all  it    is  not    so  much    a 
question  of  Milton  versus  George  Ade,  as  it  is  of  san 
ity  and  wholesomeness  against  vulgarity  and  morbid 
ity.    And  if  I  were  to  walk  through  one  city  and  be 
hold  collections  of  this  latter  sort  predominating  and 
then  through  another,  where  my  eyes  were  gladdened 
with  evidences  of  good  taste,  of  love  for  humor  that  is 
wholesome,  sentiment  that  is  sane,  verse  that  is  tune 
ful  and  noble,  I  should  at  once  call  on  the  public  li 
brarian  and  I  should  say  to  him,  "Thou  art  the  man !" 
The  literary  taste  of  your  community  is  a  reflection 
of  your  own  as  shown  forth  in  your  OAVII  institution- 
its  collection  of  books,  the  assistants  with  which  you 
have  surrounded  yourself,  your  attitude   and  theirs 
through  you  toward  literature  and  toward  the  public. 
But,  someone  asks,  suppose  that  I  am  so  fortunate 
and  so  happy  as  to  sit  in  the  midst  of  such  a  group  of 
friendly  authors;  how  and  how  often  shall  I  re-read? 
Shall  I  traverse  the  group  every    year?      He    who 
speaks  thus  is  playing  a  part ;  he  is  not  the  real  thing. 
Does  the  young  lover  ask  how  and  how  often  he  shall 
go  to  see  his  sweetheart?    Try  to  see  whether  you  can 
keep  him  away !    The  book-lover  reopens  his  favorite 
volume  whenever  he  feels  like  it.     Among  the  works 


172  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

on  his  shelves  are  books  for  every  mood,  every  shade 
of  varying  temper  and  humor.  He  chooses  for  the 
moment  the  friend  that  best  corresponds  to  it,  or  it 
may  be,  the  one  that  may  best  woo  him  away  from  it. 
It  may  be  that  he  will  select  none  of  them,  but  occupy 
himself  with  a  pile  of  newcomers,  some  of  whom  may 
be  candidates  for  admission  to  the  inner  group.  The 
whole  thing — the  composition  of  his  library,  his  atti 
tude  toward  it,  the  books  that  he  re-reads  oftenest, 
the  favorite  passages  that  he  loves,  that  he  scans 
fondly  with  his  eye  while  yet  he  can  repeat  them  by 
heart,  his  standards  of  admission  to  his  inner  circle — 
all  is  peculiarly  and  personally  his  own.  There  is  no 
other  precisely  like  it,  just  as  there  is  no  other  human 
being  precisely  like  its  owner.  There  is  as  much  dif 
ference  between  this  kind  of  a  library  and  some  that 
we  have  seen  as  there  is  between  a  live,  breathing 
creature  with  a  mind  and  emotions  and  aspirations, 
and  a  wax  figure  in  the  Eden  Musee. 

Thus  every  book  lover  re-reads  his  favorites  in  a 
way  of  his  own,  just  as  every  individual  human  being 
loves  or  hates  or  mourns  or  rejoices  in  a  way  of  his 
own. 

One  can  no  more  describe  these  idiosyncrasies 
than  he  can  write  a  history  of  all  the  individuals  in 
the  world,  but  perhaps,  in  the  manner  of  the  ethno 
logical  or  zoological  classifier,  it  may  interest  us  to 
glance  at  the  types  of  a  few  genera  or  species. 

And  first,  please  note  that  re-reading  is  the  exact 
repetition  of  a  dual  mental  experience,  so  far  at  least 
as  one  of  the  minds  is  concerned.  It  is  a  replica  of 
mind-contact,  under  conditions  obtainable  nowhere 
else  in  this  world  and  of  such  nature  that  some  of 
them  seem  almost  to  partake  of  other- worldliness. 
My  yesterday's  interview  with  Smith  or  Jones,  trivial 
as  it  is,  I  can  not  repeat.  Smith  can  not  remember 


AET    OF    EE-EEADING  173 

what  he  said,  and  even  if  he  could,  he  could  not  say 
it  to  me  in  the  same  way  and  to  the  same  purpose. 
But  my  interview  with  Plato — with  Shakespeare, 
with  Emerson;  my  talk  with  Julius  Caesar,  with 
Goethe,  with  Lincoln !  I  can  duplicate  it  once,  twice, 
a  hundred  times.  My  own  mind — one  party  to  the 
contact— may  change,  but  Plato's  or  Lincoln's  is  ever 
the  same;  they  speak  no  "various  language"  like 
Byrant's  nature,  but  are  like  that  great  Author  of 
Nature  who  has  taken  them  to  Himself,  in  that  in 
them  "is  no  variableness,  neither  shadow  of  turning." 
To  realize  that  these  men  may  speak  to  me  today, 
across  the  abyss  of  time,  and  that  I  can  count  on  the 
same  message  tomorrow,  next  year  and  on  my  death 
bed,  in  the  same  authentic  words,  producing  the  same 
effect,  assures  me  that  somewhere,  somehow,  a  mir 
acle  has  been 'wrought. 

I  have  said  that  one  of  the  minds  that  come  thus 
into  contact  changes  not,  while  the  other,  the  read 
er's,  is  alterable.  This  gives  him  a  sort  of  standard 
by  which  he  can  measure  or  at  least  estimate,  the 
changes  that  go  on  within  him,  the  temporary  ones 
due  to  fluctuations  in  health,  strength  or  temper,  the 
progressive  ones  due  to  natural  growth  or  to  outside 
influences. 

In  his  "Introduction  to  Don  Quixote,"  Heine  tells 
us  how  that  book,  the  first  that  he  ever  read,  was  his 
mental  companion  through  life.  In  that  first  perusal 
knowing  not  "how  much  irony  God  had  interwoven 
into  the  world,"  he  looked  upon  the  luckless  knight 
as  a  real  hero  of  romance  and  wept  bitterly  when  his 
chivalry  and  generosity  met  with  ingratitude  and 
violence.  A  little  later,  when  the  satire  dawned  upon 
his  comprehension,  he  could  not  bear  the  book.  Still 
later  he  read  it  with  contemptuous  laughter  at  the 
poor  knight.  But  when  in  later  life,  he  lay  racked  on 


174  LIHKAKIAX'S    OPEN    SHELF 

a  bed  of  pain  his  attitude  of  sympathy  returned. 
"Dulcinea  del  Toboso,"  he  says  "is  still  the  most 
beautiful  woman  in  the  world ;  although  I  lie  stretch 
ed  upon  the  earth,  helpless  and  miserable,  I  will  never 
take  back  that  assertion.  I  can  not  do  otherwise. 
On  with  your  lances,  ye  Knights  of  the  Silver  Moon ; 
ye  disguised  barbers !" 

So  every  reader's  viewpoint  shifts  with  the  years. 

Our  friend  who  welcomes  George  Ade  to  his  inner 
sanctuary  may  find  as  the  years  go  on  that  his  reac 
tion  to  that  contact  has  altered.  I  should  not  recom 
mend  that  the  author  be  then  be  cast  into  outer  dark 
ness.  Once  a  favorite,  always  a  favorite,  for  old 
sake's  sake  even  if  not  for  present  power  and  influ 
ence.  Our  private  libraries  will  hold  shelf  after  shelf 
of  these  old-time  favorites — milestones  on  the  intel 
lectual  track  over  which  we  have  wearily  or  joyously 
traveled. 

There  will  always  be  a  warm  spot  in  my  heart  and 
a  nook  on  my  private  shelf  for  Oliver  Optic  and 
Horatio  Alger.  Though  I  bar  them  from  my  library 
(I  mean  my  Library  with  a  big  L)  I  have  no  right  to 
exclude  them  from  my  private  collection  of  favorites, 
for  once  I  loved  them.  I  scarcely  know  why  or  how. 
If  there  had  been  in  those  far-off  days  of  my  boyhood, 
children's  libraries  and  children's  librarians,  I  might 
not  have  known  them;  as  it  is,  they  are  incidents  in 
my  literary  past  that  can  not  be  blinked,  shameful 
though  they  may  be.  The  re-reading  of  such  books 
as  these  is  interesting  because  it  shows  us  how  far  we 
have  traveled  since  we  counted  them  among  our 
favorites. 

Then  there  is  the  book  that,  despite  its  acknowl 
edged  excellence,  the  reader  would  not  perhaps  admit 
to  his  inner  circle  if  he  read  it  now  for  the  first  time. 


ART    OF    RE-READING  175 

It  holds  its  place  largely  on  account  of  the  glamour 
with  which  his  youth  invested  it.  It  thrills  him  now 
as  it  thrilled  him  then,  but  he  half  suspects  that  the 
thrill  is  largely  reminiscent.  I  sometimes  fancy  that 
as  I  re-read  Ivanhoe  and  my  heart  leaps  to  my  mouth 
when  the  knights  clash  at  Ashby,  the  propulsive 
power  of  that  leap  had  its  origin  in  the  emotions  of 
1870  rather  than  those  of  1914.  And  when  some  of 
Dickens'  pathos — that  death-bed  of  Paul  Dombey  for 
instance — brings  the  tears  again  unbidden  to  my 
eyes,  I  suspect,  though  I  scarcely  dare  to  put  rny  sus 
picion  into  words,  that  the  salt  in  those  tears  is  of  the 
vintage  of  1875.  I  am  reading  Arnold  Bennett  now 
and  loving  him  very  dearly  when  he  is  at  his  best ;  but 
how  I  shall  feel  about  him  in  1930  or  how  I  might  feel 
if  I  could  live  until  2014,  is  another  question. 

Then  there  is  the  book  that,  scarce  comprehended 
or  appreciated  when  it  was  first  read,  but  loved  for 
some  magic  of  expression  or  turn  of  thought,  shows 
new  beauties  at  each  re-reading,  unfolding  like  an 
opening  rose  and  bringing  to  view  petals  of  beauty, 
wit,  wisdom  and  power  that  were  before  unsuspected. 
This  is  the  kind  of  book  that  one  loves  most  to  re-read, 
for  the  growth  that  one  sees  in  it  is  after  all  in  one 
self — not  in  the  book.  The  geins  that  you  did  not  see 
when  you  read  it  first  were  there  then  as  they  are 
now.  You  saw  them  not  then  and  you  see  them  now, 
for  your  mental  sight  is  stronger — you  are  more  of  a 
man  now  than  you  were  then. 

Not  that  all  the  changes  of  the  years  are  neces 
sarily  for  the  better.  They  may  be  neither  for  better 
nor  for.  worse.  As  the  moving  train  hurries  us  on 
ward  we  may  enjoy  successively  the  beauties  of 
canyon,  prairie  and  lake,  admiring  each  as  we  come  to 
it  without  prejudice  to  what  has  gone  before.  In 


17(3  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

youth  we  love  only  bright  colors  and  their  contrasts 
—brilliant  sunsets  and  autumn  foliage;  in  later  life 
we  come  to  appreciate  also  the  more  delicate  tints  and 
their  gradations — a  prospect  of  swamp-land  and  dis 
tant  lake  or  sea  on  a  gray  day;  a  smoky  town  in  the 
fog;  the  tender  dove  colors  of  early  dawns.  So  in 
youth  we  eagerly  read  of  blood  and  glory  and  wild 
adventure;  Trollope  is  insufferably  dull.  Jane  Aus 
ten  is  for  old  maids ;  even  such  a  gem  as  Cranf ord  we 
do  not  rate  at  its  true  value.  But  in  after  life  how 
their  quiet  shades  and  tints  come  out !  There  is  no 
glory  in  them,  no  carnage,  no  combat;  but  there  is 
charm  and  fascination  in  the  very  slowness  of  their 
movement,  the  shortness  of  their  range,  their  lack  of 
intensity,  the  absence  of  the  shrill,  high  notes  and  the 
tremendous  bases. 

Then  there  is  the  re-reading  that  accuses  the 
reader  of  another  kind  of  change — a  twist  to  the  right 
or  the  left,  a  cast  in  the  mental  eye,  or  perhaps  the 
correction  of  such  a  cast.  The  doctrines  in  some  book 
seemed  strange  to  you  once — almost  abhorrent;  you 
are  ready  to  accept  them  now.  Is  it  because  you  then 
saw  through  a  glass  darkly  and  now  more  clearly? 
Or  is  your  vision  darker  now  than  it  was?  Your  re 
reading  apprizes  you  that  there  has  been  a  change  of 
some  sort.  Perhaps  you  must  await  corroborative 
testimony  before  you  decide  what  its  nature  has  been. 
Possibly  you  read  today  without  a  blush  what  your 
mind  of  twenty  years  ago  would  have  been  shocked 
to  meet.  Are  you  broader-minded  or  just  hardened? 
These  questions  are  disquieting,  but  the  disturbance 
that  they  cause  is  wholesome,  and  I  know  of  no  way 
in  which  they  can  be  raised  in  more  uncompromising 
form  than  by  re-reading  an  old  favorite,  by  bringing 
the  alterable  fabric  of  your  living,  growing  and 
changing  mind  into  contact  with  the  stiff,  unyielding 


ART    OF    RE-READING  177 

yardstick  of  an  unchangeable  mental  record — the 
cast  of  one  phase  of  a  master  mind  that  once  was  but 
has  passed  on. 

Here  I  can  not  help  saying  a  word  of  a  kind  of  re 
reading  that  is  not  the  perusal  of  literature  at  all 
with  most  of  us — the  re-reading  of  our  own  words, 
written  down  in  previous  years — old  letters,  old  lec 
tures,  articles — books,  perhaps,  if  we  chance  to  be 
authors.  Of  little  value,  perhaps,  to  others,  these  are 
of  the  greatest  interest  to  ourselves  because  instead 
of  measuring  our  minds  by  an  outside  standard  they 
enable  us  to  set  side  by  side  two  phases  of  our  own 
life—the  ego  of  1892,  perhaps,  and  that  of  1914.  How 
boyish  that  other  ego  was;  how  it  jumped  to  conclu 
sions;  how  ignorant  it  was  and  how  self-confident! 
And  yet,  how  fresh  it  was ;  how  quickly  responsive  to 
new  impressions;  how  unspoiled;  how  aspiring!  If 
you  want  to  know  the  changes  that  have  transformed 
the  mind  that  was  into  the  very  different  one  that 
now  is,  read  your  own  old  letters. 

I  have  tried  to  show  you  that  pure  literature  is  an 
art  and  like  other  arts  depends  primarily  upon  man 
ner  and  only  secondarily  upon  matter.  That  the  art 
ist,  who  in  this  case  is  the  author,  uses  his  power  to 
influence  the  reader  usually  through  his  emotions  or 
feelings  and  that  its  effects  to  a  notable  extent,  are 
not  marred  by  repetition.  That  on  this  account  all 
good  literature  may  be  re-read  over  and  over,  and 
that  the  pleasure  derived  from  such  re-reading  is  a 
sign  that  a  book  is  peculiarly  adapted  in  some  way  to 
the  reader.  Finally,  that  one's  private  library,  espe 
cially  if  its  size  be  limited,  may  well  consist  of  per 
sonal  favorites,  often  re-read. 

When  the  astronomer  Kepler  had  reduced  to 
simple  laws  the  complicated  motions  of  the  planets 
he  cried  out  in  ecstacy:  "O  God!  now  think  I  Thy 


178  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

thoughts  after  Thee!"  Thus  when  a  great  writer  of 
old  time  has  been  vouchsafed  a  spark  of  the  divine 
fire  we  may  think  his  divine  thoughts  after  him  by 
re-reading.  And  Shakespeare  tells  us  in  that  death 
less  speech  of  Portia's,  that  since  mercy  is  God's 
attribute  we  may  by  exercising  it  become  like  God. 
Thus,  by  the  mere  act  of  tuning  our  brains  to  think 
the  thoughts  that  the  Almighty  has  put  into  the 
minds  of  the  good  and  the  great,  may  it  riot  be  that 
our  own  thoughts  may  at  the  last  come  to  be  shaped 
in  the  same  mould? 

"Old  wine,  old  friends,  old  books,"  says  the  old 
adage;  and  of  the  three  the  last  are  surely  the  most 
satisfying.  The  old  wine  may  turn  to  vinegar;  old 
friends  may  forget  or  forsake  us;  but  the  old  book 
is  ever  the  same.  What  would  the  old  man  do  with 
out  it?  And  to  you  who  are  young  I  would  say — 
that  you  may  re-read,  you  first  must  read.  Choose 
worthy  books  to  love.  As  for  those  who  know  no 
book  long  enough  either  to  love  or  despise  it — who 
skim  through  good  and  bad  alike  and  forget  page 
ninety-nine  while  reading  page  100,  we  may  simply 
say  to  them,  in  the  words  of  the  witty  Frenchman, 
"What  a  sad  old  age  you  are  preparing  for  yourself !" 


HISTORY  AND  HEBEDITY* 

In  one  of  his  earlier  books,  Prof.  Hugo  Munster- 
berg  cites  the  growing  love  for  tracing  pedigrees  as 
evidence  of  a  dangerous  American  tendency  toward 
aristocracy.  There  are  only  two  little  things  the 
matter  with  this — the  fact  and  the  inference  from 
it.  In  the  first  place,  we  Americans  have  always  been 
proud  of  our  ancestry  and  fond  of  tracing  it;  and  in 
the  second  place,  this  fondness  is  akin,  not  to  aristo 
cracy  but  to  democracy.  It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this 
paper  to  prove  this  thesis  in  detail,  so  I  will  merely 
bid  you  note  that  aristocratic  pedigree-tracers  con 
fine  themselves  to  one  line,  or  to  a  few  lines.  Burke 
will  tell  you  that  one  of  the  great-great-grandfathers 
of  the  present  Lord  Foozlem  was  the  First  Baron ; 
he  is  silent  about  his  great-grandfather,  the  tinker, 
and  his  great-grandfather,  the  pettifogging  country 
lawyer.  Americans  are  far  more  apt  to  push  their 
genealogical  investigations  in  all  directions,  because 
they  are  prompted  by  a  legitimate  curiosity  rather 
than  by  desire  to  prove  a  point.  American  genealogi 
cal  research  is  biological,  while  that  of  Europe  is 
commercial. 

An  obvious  advantage  of  interest  in  our  ancestors 
is  that  it  ought  to  make  history  a  more  vital  thing 
to  us;  for  to  them,  history  was  merely  current  events 
in  which  they  took  part,  or  which,  at  least,  they 
watched.  This  linking  up  of  our  personal  ancestral 
lines  with  past  events  is  done  too  seldom.  Societies 
like  the  New  England  Society  are  doing  it,  and  it  is 

*  Read   before   the    New    England    Society   of    St.    Louis. 


ISO  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

for  this  reason  that  I  have  chosen  to  bring  the  sub 
ject  briefly  before  you. 

It  has  been  noted  that  our  historical  notions  of 
the  Civil  War  are  now,  and  are  going  to  be  in  the 
future,  more  just  and  less  partisan  than  those  of 
the  Revolution.  This  is  not  because  we  are  nearer 
the  Civil  War;  for  nearness  often  tends  to  confuse 
historical  ideas  rather  than  to  clear  them  up.  It  is 
because  the  descendants  of  those  who  fought  on  both 
sides  are  here  with  us,  citizens  of  our  common  coun 
try,  intermarrying  and  coming  into  contact  in  a 
thousand  ways.  We  are  not  likely  to  ignore  the 
Southern  standpoint  regarding  the  rights  of  seces 
sion  and  the  events  of  the  struggle  so  long  as  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  Confederate  soldiers  live  among  us. 
Nor  shall  we  ever  forget  the  Northern  point  of  view 
while  the  descendants  of  those  who  fought  with 
Grant  and  Sherman  are  our  friends  and  neighbors. 

It  is  otherwise  with  the  Revolution.  We  are  the 
descendants  only  of  those  who  fought  on  one  side.  Of 
the  others,  part  went  back  to  their  homes  in  Eng 
land,  the  rest,  our  old  neighbors  and  friends,  we  de 
spoiled  of  their  lands  and  drove  across  our  northern 
border  with  execrations,  to  make  new  homes  in  a  new 
land  and  view  us  with  a  hatred  that  has  not  yet 
passed  away.  If  you  doubt  it,  discuss  the  American 
Revolution  for  fifteen  minutes  with  one  of  the  United 
Empire  Loyalists  of  Toronto.  It  will  surprise  you 
to  know  that  your  patriot  ancestors  were  thieves, 
blacklegs  and  scoundrels.  I  do  not  believe  that  they 
were;  but  possibly  they  were  not  the  impossible 
archangels  of  the  school  histories. 

Of  one  thing  I  am  sure;  that  if  the  descendants  of 
those  who  fought  against  us  in  '76  had  been  left  to 
mingle  with  our  own  people,  the  historical  recollec 
tions  of  the  struggle  would  have  been  surer  and  truer 


HISTORY    AND    HEREDITY  181 

on  both  sides  than  they  are  to-day.  Here  is  a  case 
where  ancestry  has  perverted  history,  but  simply  be 
cause  there  has  been  an  unnatural  segregation  of 
descendants.  Let  me  note  another  where  we  have  ab 
solutely  forgotten  our  ancestral  predilections  and 
have  gone  over  to  the  other  side,  simply  because  the 
other  side  made  the  records.  When  we  read  a  Roman 
account  of  encounters  between  the  legions  and  the 
northern  tribes,  where  do  we  place  ourselves  in  imag 
ination,  as  readers?  Always  with  the  Roman 
legions.  But  our  place  is  not  there;  it  is  with  our 
hardy  and  brave  forefathers,  fighting  to  defend  their 
country  and  their  firesides  against  the  southern  in 
truders.  How  many  teachers  of  history  try  to  utilize 
race-consciousness  in  their  pupils  to  make  them  at 
tain  a  clearer  knowledge  of  what  it  all  meant? 
Should  we  not  be  proud  that  we  are  of  the  blood  of 
men  who  withstood  the  self-styled  rulers  of  the  world 
and  won  their  freedom  and  their  right  to  shape  their 
own  personal  and  civic  development? 

I  should  like  to  see  a  book  tracing  the  history  and 
development  of  an  imaginary  Anglo-Saxon  American 
line  of  ancestry,  taking  it  from  the  forests  of  North 
ern  Germany  across  to  Britain,  through  the  Norman 
conquest  and  down  the  stream  of  subsequent  English 
history  across  seas  to  America — through  savage  wars 
and  Revolution,  perhaps  across  the  Alleghenies,  to 
settle  finally  in  the  great  West.  I  would  try  to 
make  the  reader  realize  that  here  was  no  fairy  tale — 
no  tale  of  countries  and  races  with  which  we  have 
naught  to  do,  but  the  story  of  our  own  fathers,  whose 
features  and  wThose  characteristics,  physical  and 
mental,  have  been  transmitted  by  heredity  to  us, 
their  sons  and  daughters  of  the  year  1913. 

It  is  unfortunate  perhaps,  for  our  perceptions  of 
racial  continuity,  that  we  are  rovers  by  disposition. 


182  LIBKABIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Who  runs  across  the  sea,  says  the  Latin  poet,  changes 
his  sky  but  not  his  mind.  True  enough,  but  it  is  diffi 
cult  for  some  of  us  to  realize  it.  It  is  hard  for  some 
of  us  to  realize  that  our  emigrant  ancestors  were  the 
same  men  and  women  when  they  set  foot  on  these 
shores  as  when  they  left  the  other  side  some  weeks 
before.  Our  trans-Atlantic  cousins  labor  under  the 
same  difficulties,  for  they  assure  us  continually  that 
we  are  a  "new"  country.  We  have,  they  say,  the 
faults  and  the  advantages  of  "youth."  It  would  be 
interesting  to  know  at  just  what  point  in  the  passage 
the  education  and  the  habits  and  the  prejudices  of  the 
incoming  Englishman  dropped  off.  Change  of  en 
vironment  works  wonders  with  habits  and  even  with 
character;  we  must  of  course  recognize  that;  but  it 
certainly  does  not  make  of  the  mind  a  tabula  rasa  on 
which  the  fresh  surroundings  may  absolutely  work 
their  will. 

I  must  say  that  our  migrations  within  the  limits 
of  our  own  continent  have  not  been  productive  of  so 
much  forgetfulness.  I  have  been  struck,  for  instance, 
since  I  came  to  St.  Louis,  with  what  I  may  call  the 
source-consciousness  of  our  western  population. 
Everyone,  whether  he  is  particularly  interested  in 
genealogy  or  not,  knows  that  his  people  came  from 
Vermont  or  Virginia  or  Pennsylvania.  He  may  not 
be  able  to  trace  his  ancestry,  or  even  to  name  his 
great-grandfather;  but  with  the  source  of  that  an 
cestry  he  is  always  acquainted.  I  believe  this  to  be 
the  case  throughout  the  Middle  West.  From  this 
point  of  view  the  population  is  not  so  well  mixed  as 
it  is  in  the  East.  No  one  in  Massachusetts  or  Con 
necticut  can  point  out  to  you,  offhand,  the  families 
that  came  from  particular  counties  in  England. 
And  yet  in  England,  a  migration  from  one  county 
to  another  is  always  recognized  and  remembered.  A 


HISTORY    AND    HEREDITY  183 

cousin  of  mine,  visiting  on  an  English  estate,  was 
casually  informed  by  his  host,  "Our  family  are  new 
comers  in  this  county.  We  moved  in  only  about  300 
years  ago."  From  this  point  of  view  we  are  all  new 
comers  in  America.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  as  the 
years  go  on,  the  elements  of  our  western  population 
will  not  so  thoroughly  lose  sight  of  their  sources  as 
have  the  Easterners.  It  is  not  likely  that  they  will, 
for  those  sources  are  more  accessible.  We  have  Vir 
ginia  families  who  still  keep  up  friendly  intercourse 
with  the  old  stock ;  Vermont  families  who  spend  each 
summer  on  the  old  homestead;  and  so  on.  The  New 
Englander  did  not  and  could  not  keep  up  similar 
relations  with  Old  England.  Even  the  Southerner, 
who  did  it  for  a  time,  had  to  drop  it.  Our  inter-com 
munication  with  Europe  has  grown  enormously  in 
volume,  but  little  of  it,  if  any,  is  due  to  continuous 
ancestral  interest,  although  a  revived  general  in 
terest  has  sprung  up  and  is  to  be  commended. 

I  fear,  however,  that  the  greater  part  of  this  in 
terest  in  sources,  where  it  exists,  is  very  far  from  an 
intelligent  connection  with  the  body  of  historical 
fact.  When  a  man  is  proud  of  the  fact  that  an  an 
cestor  took  part  in  the  famous  Boston  Tea  Party,  has 
he  taken  any  pains  to  ascertain  what  actually  took 
place  on  that  occasion?  If  he  claims  descent  from 
Pocahontas,  can  he  tell  us  just  how  much  of  what  we 
currently  believe  of  her  is  fact  and  how  much  is 
myth?  If  he  knows  that  his  family  came  from  Ches 
hire,  England,  and  was  established  and  well-known 
there  for  centuries,  what  does  he  know  of  the  his 
tory  of  Cheshire  and  of  the  connection  of  his  ances 
tors  with  it?  Our  interest,  when  it  exists,  is  con 
centrated  too  much  on  trivial  happenings.  We  know 
and  boast  that  an  ancestor  came  over  in  the  May 
flower  without  knowing  of  the  family  doings  before 


184  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

and  after  that  event.  Of  course,  connection  with  some 
one  picturesque  event  serves  to  stimulate  the  imagi 
nation  and  focus  the  interest,  but  these  events  should 
serve  as  starting  points  for  investigation  rather  than 
resting  points  where  interest  begins  and  ends.  His 
torical  students  are  beginning  to  realize  that  it  is  not 
enough  to  know  about  the  battle  of  Hastings  without 
understanding  the  causes  and  forces  that  led  to  it 
and  proceeded  from  it,  and  the  daily  lives  and 
thoughts  of  those  who  took  part  in  it,  from  captain 
to  spearman. 

This  failure  to  link  up  family  history  with  general 
history  is  responsible  for  many  sad  losses  of  his 
torical  material.  Many  persons  do  not  understand 
the  value  of  old  letters  and  diaries;  many  who  do, 
keep  them  closely  in  the  family  archives  where  they 
are  unknown  and  unappreciated.  Old  letters  con 
taining  material  that  bears  in  any  way  on  the  events, 
customs  or  life  of  the  time,  should  be  turned  over  to 
the  local  historical  society.  If  they  contain  private 
matter,  seal  up  the  packet  and  require  that  it  shall 
remain  sealed  for  a  century,  if  you  wish;  but  do  not 
burn  it.  The  feeling  that  destroys  such  documents 
is  simply  evidence  that  we  are  historically  valuing 
the  individual  and  the  family  above  the  community, 
just  as  we  still  are  in  so  many  other  fields  of  thought. 
I  cannot  tolerate  the  idea  that  we  shall  ultimately 
think  only  in  terms  of  the  common  good;  the  smaller 
units,  the  man,  the  family  must  not  lose  their  in 
fluence,  but  the  connection  between  them  and  the 
general  welfare  must  be  better  understood  and  more 
generally  recognized;  and  this  must  be  done,  in  the 
first  place,  in  all  that  relates  to  their  historical  re 
cords  and  to  our  historical  consciousness. 

Ancestral  feeling  should,  in  this  way,  always  be 


HISTORY    AND    HEREDITY  185 

historical,  iiot  individual.  A  man  is  right  to  be  per 
sonally  proud  of  his  own  achievements,  but  it  is  dif 
ficult  to  see  how  he  can  properly  take  the  same  kind 
of  pride  in  that  of  others,  whether  related  to  him 
by  blood  or  not.  But  there  are  other  kinds  of  legi 
timate  pride — family  pride,  racial  pride,  group  pride 
of  all  sorts,  where  the  feeling  is  not  personal.  If  any 
member  of  a  family,  a  profession  or  any  association, 
has  so  conducted  himself  that  credit  is  gained  for 
the  whole  body,  it  is  proper  that  this  kind  of  group 
pride  should  be  felt  by  each  member  of  the  body,  and 
in  the  case  of  a  family,  where  the  bond  is  one  of 
blood,  the  group  feeling  should  be  stronger  and  the 
group  pride,  if  it  is  proper  to  feel  it  at  all,  may  be 
of  peculiar  strength,  provided  it  be  carefully  distin 
guished  from  the  pride  due  to  personal  achievement. 
And  when  the  member  of  the  family  in  whom  one 
takes  pride  is  an  ancestor,  this  means,  as  I  have  said, 
that  feeling  should  be  historical,  not  individual.  And 
anything  that  tends  to  lift  our  interest  from  the  in 
dividual  to  the  historical  plane — to  make  us  cease 
from  congratulating  ourselves  personally  on  some 
connection  with  the  good  and  great  and  substitute  a 
feeling  of  group  pride  shared  in  common  by  some 
body  to  which  we  all  belong,  is  acting  toward  this  de 
sirable  end.  The  body  may  be  a  family ;  it  may  be  the 
community  or  the  state;  it  may  be  as  broad  as  human 
ity  itself,  for  we  may  all  be  proud  of  the  world's 
greatest.  Or  it  may  be  a  body  like  our  own,  formed  to 
cherish  the  memories  of  forebears  in  some  particular 
line  of  endeavor,  in  some  particular  place  or  at  some 
particular  era.  Our  ancestry  is  part  of  our  history; 
so  long  as  our  regard  for  it  is  properly  interwoven 
with  our  historical  sense,  no  one  can  properly  charge 
us  with  laving  the  foundation  for  aristorracv.  We  are 


186  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

rather  making  true  democracy  possible,  for  such  is 
the  case  only  when  the  elements  of  a  community  are 
closely  united  by  ties  of  blood,  interest  and  knowl 
edge — by  pride  in  those  who  have  gone  before  and 
by  determination  that  the  standard  set  by  these  men 
and  women  of  old  shall  be  worthily  upheld. 


WHAT  THE  FLAG  STANDS  FOR* 

The  most  important  things  in  the  world  are  ideas. 
We  are  so  familiar  with  the  things  that  are  the 
material  embodiment  of  ideas — buildings,  roads, 
vehicles  and  machines — that  we  are  prone  to  forget 
that  without  the  ideas  that  gave  them  birth  all  these 
would  be  impossible.  A  house  is  a  mass  of  wood, 
stone  and  metal,  but  all  these  substances,  collected 
in  a  pile,  do  not  suffice  to  make  a  house. 

A  locomotive  is  made  of  steel  and  brass,  but  al 
though  the  ancient  Romans  had  both  the  metal  and 
the  alloy,  they  had  no  locomotives. 

The  vital  thing  about  the  house — the  thing  that 
differentiates  it  from  other  masses  of  the  same  ma 
terials — is  the  idea — the  plan — that  was  in  the  ar 
chitect's  mind  while  wood  and  stone  and  iron  were 
still  in  forest,  quarry  and  mine.  The  vital  thing 
about  the  locomotive  is  the  builder's  idea  or  plan, 
which  he  derived,  in  turn,  from  the  inventor. 

The  reason  why  there  were  no  locomotives  in  an 
cient  Borne  is  that  in  those  days  the  locomotive  had 
not  yet  been  invented,  and  when  we  say  this  we  re 
fer  not  to  the  materials,  which  the  Romans  had  in 
abundance,  but  to  the  idea  or  plan  of  the  locomotive. 
So  it  is  with  the  whole  material  world  about  us.  The 
things  that  result,  not  from  man's  activities,  but  from 
the  operations  of  nature,  are  no  exceptions ;  for,  if  we 
are  Christians,  we  believe  that  the  idea  or  plan  of 
a  man,  or  a  horse,  or  a  tree,  was  in  the  mind  of  the 
great  architect,  the  great  machinist,  before  the  world 

*  An    address   on   Flap  Day   made   in    St.    Peter's   Church,   St.    Louis. 


188  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

began,  and  that  this  idea  is  the  important  thing  about 
each. 

A  man,  a  house,  an  engine — these  are  ideas  that 
lead  to  things  that  we  can  feel,  and  see  and  hear. 
But  there  are  other  ideas  that  have  nothing  of  the 
kind  to  correspond  to  them — I  mean  such  ideas  as 
charity,  manliness,  religion  and  patriotism — what 
sometimes  are  called  abstract  qualities.  These  are 
real  things  and  their  ideas  are  even  more  important 
than  the  others,  but  we  cannot  see  nor  feel  them. 

Now,  man  likes  to  use  his  senses,  and  it  is  for 
this  reason  that  he  is  fond  of  using  for  these  abstract 
ideas,  symbols  that  he  can  see  and  feel.  We  of  St. 
Louis  should  appreciate  this  to  the  full  just  now,  for 
we  have  just  set  before  the  world  the  greatest  as 
semblage  of  symbolic  images  and  acts,  portraying  our 
pride  in  the  past  and  our  hope  and  confidence  for 
the  future,  that  any  city  on  this  earth  ever  has  been 
privileged  to  present  or  to  witness.  *  Whether  we 
were  actors  or  spectators;  whether  we  camped  with 
the  Indians,  marched  with  De  Soto  or  La  Salle  and 
felled  the  forests  of  early  St.  Louis  with  Laclede  and 
Chouteau,  or  whether  we  were  part  of  that  great  host 
on  the  hillside,  we  can  say  no  longer  that  we  do  not 
understand  the  importance  of  the  idea,  or  the  value 
and  cogency  of  the  visible  symbols  that  fix  it  in  the 
memory  and  grip  it  to  the  heart. 

The  Church  of  Christ  always  has  understood  and 
used  this  property  of  the  visible  and  tangible  symbol 
to  enforce  the  claims  of  the  abstract  idea. 

We  revere  the  cross,  not  because  there  is  anything 
in  its  shape  or  substance  to  make  us  venerate  it,  but 
because  it  is  the  symbol  of  the  Christian  religion— 
of  all  that  it  has  done  for  the  world  in  the  past  and 
nil  that  it  may  do  in  the  future.  That  is  why  we 

*  The    Pageant   and    Masque    of    St.    Louis,    1015. 


THE    FLAG  189 

love  and  honor  the  flag — not  because  it  is  a  piece  of 
cloth  bearing  certain  figures  and  colors,  but  because 
it  is  to  us  the  symbol  of  all  that  our  country  has 
meant  to  our  fathers;  all  it  means  to  us  and  all  that 
it  may  mean  to  our  children,  generation  after  genera 
tion. 

A  nation's  flag  did  not  always  mean  all  this  to 
those  who  gazed  upon  it.  In  very  old  times  the  flag 
was  for  the  soldier  alone  and  had  no  more  meaning 
for  the  ordinary  citizen  than  a  helmet  or  a  spear. 
When  the  soldier  saw  it  uplifted  in  the  thick  of  the 
battle  he  rallied  to  it.  Then  the  flag  became  the  per 
sonal  emblem  of  a  king  or  a  prince,  whether  in  battle 
or  not;  then  it  was  used  to  mark  what  belonged  to 
the  government  of  a  country.  It  is  still  so  used  in 
many  parts  of  Europe,  where  the  display  of  a  flag  on 
a  building  marks  it  as  government  property,  as  our 
flag  does  when  it  is  used  on  a  post  office  or  a  cus 
tom-house.  Nowhere  but  in  our  own  country  is  the 
flag  used  as  the  general  symbol  of  patriotic  feeling 
and  displayed  alike  by  soldier  and  citizen,  by  Govern 
ment  office  and  private  dwelling.  So  it  comes  about 
that  the  stars  and  stripes  means  to  us  all  that  his 
eagles  did  to  the  Roman  soldier;  all  that  the  great 
Oriflamnie  did  to  the  medieval  Frenchman;  all  that 
the  Union  Jack  now  means  to  the  Briton  or  the  tri 
color  to  the  Frenchman — and  more,  very  much  more, 
beside. 

What  ideas,  then,  does  the  flag  stand  for?  First, 
it  stands  for  union.  It  was  conceived  in  union,  it 
was  dipped  in  blood  to  preserve  union,  and  for  union 
it  still  stands.  Its  thirteen  stripes  remind  us  of  that 
gallant  little  strip  of  united  colonies  along  the  At 
lantic  shore  that  threw  down  the  gage  of  battle  to 
Britain  a  century  and  a  half  ago.  Its  stars  are  sym 
bols  of  the  wider  union  that  now  is.  Both  may  be 


190  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

held  to  signify  the  great  truth  that  in  singleness  of 
purpose  among  many  there  is  effective  strength  that 
no  one  by  himself  can  hope  to  achieve.  Our  union 
of  States  was  formed  in  fear  of  foreign  aggression; 
we  have  need  of  it  still  though  our  foes  be  of  our  own 
household.  If  we  are  ever  to  govern  our  cities  prop 
erly,  hold  the  balance  evenly  betwixt  capital  and 
labor,  develop  our  great  natural  resources  without 
undue  generosity  on  the  one  hand  or  parsimony  on  the 
other — solve  the  thousand  and  one  problems  that 
rise  to  confront  us  on  every  hand — we  shall  never 
accomplish  these  things  by  struggling  singly — one 
man  at  a  time  or  even  one  State  at  a  time,  but  by 
concerted,  united  effort,  the  perfect  union  of  which 
our  flag  is  a  symbol,  and  which  we  need  to-day  even 
more  than  we  did  in  1776  or  1861. 

We  stand  on  the  threshold  of  an  effort  to  alter  our 
city  government.  Whether  that  effort  should  or 
should  not  succeed,  every  citizen  must  decide  for 
himself,  with  the  aid  of  such  intelligence  and  judg 
ment  as  it  has  pleased  God  to  give  him.  But  if  he 
should  decide  in  its  favor,  be  certain  that  his  indi 
vidual  vote  at  the  polls  will  go  a  very  little  way  to 
ward  bringing  his  desires  to  pass.  We  are  governed 
by  majorities,  and  a  majority  is  a  union  of  many. 
He  who  wrould  win  must  not  only  vote,  but  work. 
Our  flag,  with  its  assemblages  of  stripes  and  stars, 
is  a  perpetual  reminder  that  b>  the  union  of  the 
many,  and  not  merely  by  the  rectitude  of  the  individ 
ual,  are  policies  altered  and  charters  changed. 

Again,  our  flag  stands  for  love.  It  is  a  beautiful 
flag  and  it  stands  for  a  beautiful  land.  We  all  love 
what  is  our  own,  if  we  are  normal  men  and  women— 
our  families,  our  city,  our  country.  They  are  all 
beautiful  to  us,  and  it  is  right  that  they  should  be 

I   confess   that  the  movement  that  has   for  its 


THE    FLAG  191 

motto  "See  America  First''  has  iny  hearty  sympathy. 
Not  that  the  Eockies  or  the  Sierras  are  necessarily 
more  beautiful  than  the  Alps  or  the  Missouri  fairer 
than  the  Danube ;  we  should  have  no  more  to  do  here 
with  comparisons  than  the  man  who  loves  his  chil 
dren.  He  does  not,  before  deciding  that  he  will  love 
them,  compare  them  critically  with  his  neighbors'.  If 
we  do  not  love  the  Grand  Canyon  and  the  Northern 
Rockies,  the  wild  Sierras  and  the  more  peaceful 
beauties  of  the  Alleghenies  or  the  Adirondacks, 
simply  because  leaving  these  all  unseen  we  prefer  the 
lakes  and  mountains  of  foreign  lands,  we  are  like  a 
man  who  should  desert  his  own  children,  whom  he 
had  never  seen,  to  pass  his  time  at  a  moving-picture 
show,  because  he  believed  that  he  saw  there  faces 
and  forms  more  fair  than  those  of  his  own  little  ones. 
When  we  sing  in  our  hymn  of  "America" 

I  love  thy  rocks  and  rills 
Thy  woods  and  templed  hills, 

we  should  be  able  to  do  it  from  the  heart. 

It  is  indeed  fitting  that  we  should  love  our  coun 
try,  and  thrill  when  we  gaze  at  the  old  flag  that 
symbolizes  that  love.  Does  this  mean  that  when  our 
country  makes  an  error  we  are  to  shut  our  eyes  to 
it?  Does  it  require  us  to  call  wrong  right  and  black 
white? 

There  is  a  sentiment  with  which  you  are  all 
familiar,  "My  country,  may  she  ever  be  right;  but, 
right  or  w^rong,  my  country!" 

Understood  aright,  these  are  the  noblest  and 
truest  of  words,  but  they  are  commonly  misinter 
preted,  and  they  have  done  much  harm.  To  love  and 
stand  by  a  friend  who  has  done  wrong  is  a  fine  thing ; 
but  it  would  be  very  different  to  abet  him  in  his 
wrong-doing  and  assure  him  that  he  had  done  right. 
We  mav  dearlv  love  a  son  or  a  brother  who  is  the 


192  LIBBABIAN'S    O1»EN 

worst  of  sinners,  without  joining  him  in  sin  or  per 
suading  him  that  he  is  righteous. 

So  we  may  say,  "Our  country,  right  or  wrong" 
without  forfeiting  the  due  exercise  of  our  judgment 
in  deciding  whether  she  is  right  or  wrong,  or  the 
privilege  of  exerting  our  utmost  power  to  make  her 
do  right 

If  she  is  fighting  for  an  unrighteous  cause,  we 
should  not  go  over  to  the  enemy,  but  we  should  do 
our  best  to  make  her  cease  and  to  make  amends  for 
the  wrong  she  has  done. 

Another  thing  for  which  the  flag  stands  is  free 
dom  or  liberty.  We  all  are  familiar  with  the  word. 
It  means  different  things  to  different  persons.  When 
hampering  conditions  press  hard  upon  a  man,  all 
that  he  thinks  of  for  the  moment  is  to  be  rid  of  them. 
Without  them  he  deems  that  he  will  be  free.  The 
freedom  of  which  our  fathers  thought,  for  which  they 
fought  and  which  they  won,  was  freedom  from  gov 
ernment  by  what  had  become  to  them  a  foreign 
power.  The  freedom  that  the  black  man  longed  for 
in  the  sixties  wras  freedom  from  slavery. 

To-day  men  and  women  living  in  intolerable  in 
dustrial  conditions  are  panting  for  freedom — the 
freedom  that  seems  to  them  just  now  more  desirable 
than  aught  else  in  the  world.  All  this  the  flag1  stands 
for,  but  it  stands  for  much  more.  Under  its  folds 
we  are  entitled  to  live  our  own  lives  in  the  fullest 
way  compatible  with  the  exercise  of  the  same  priv 
ilege  by  others.  This  includes  political  freedom,  in 
dustrial  freedom,  social  freedom  and  all  the  rest. 
Despite  much  grumbling  and  some  denials,  I  believe 
that  it  is  all  summed  up  under  political  freedom,  and 
that  we  have  it  all,  though  we  may  not  always  take 
advantage  of  it.  The  people  who  groan  under  an 


THE    FLAG 

industrial  yoke  do  so  because  they  do  not  choose  to 
exert  the  power  given  them  by  law,  under  the  flag, 
to  throw  it  off.  The  boss-ridden  city  is  boss-ridden 
only  because  it  is  satisfied  to  be  so.  The  generation 
that  is  throttled  by  trusts  and  monopolies  may  at 
any  time  effect  a  .peaceful  revolution.  The  flag  gives 
us  freedom,  but  even  a  man's  eternal  salvation  can 
not  be  forced  upon  him  against  his  will. 

Another  thing  for  which  the  flag  stands  is  jus 
tice — the  "square  deal,"  as  it  is  called  by  one  of  our 
Presidents.  To  every  man  shall  come  sooner  or  lat 
er,  under  its  folds,  that  which  he  deserves.  This 
means  largely  "hands  off,"  and  is  but  one  of  the  as 
pects  of  freedom,  or  liberty,  since  if  we  do  not  in 
terfere  with  a  man,  what  happens  to  him  is  a  con 
sequence  of  what  he  is  and  what  he  does.  If  we  op 
press  him,  or  interfere  with  him,  he  gets  les.s  than 
he  merits;  and  if,  on  the  contrary  we  coddle  him  and 
give  him  privileges,  he  may  get  more  than  his  due. 

Give  a  man  opportunity  and  a  free  path  and  he 
will  achieve  what  is  before  him  in  the  measure  of  his 
strength.  That  the  American  Flag  stands  for  all 
this,  thousands  will  testify  who  have  left  their  native 
shores  to  live  under  its  folds  and  who  have  con 
tributed  here  to  the  world's  progress  what  the  res 
traints  and  injustice  of  the  old  world  forbade  then 
to  give. 

This  sense  of  the  removal  of  bonds,  of  sudden  re 
lease  and  the  entry  into  free  space,  is  well  put  by 
a  poet  of  our  own,  Henry  Van  Dyke,  when  he  sings, 

So  it's  home  again,  and  home  again,  America  for  me! 
My  heart  is  turning  home  again,  and  there   I  long  to  be, 
In  the  land  of  youth  and  freedom  beyond  the  ocean  bars, 
Where  the  air  is  full  of  sunlight  and  the  flag  is  full  of  stars. 

I  know  that  Europe's  wonderful,  yet  something  seems  to  lack: 
The  Past  is  too  much  with   her,  and   the  people  looking  back, 
But  the  glory  of  the  Present  is  to  make  the  Future  free — 
We  love  our  land  for  what  she  is  and  what  she  is  to  be. 


194  LIBBARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Oh,  it's  home  again,  and  home  again,  America  for  me! 
I  want  a  ship  that's  westward  bound  to  plough  the  rolling  sea, 
To  the  blessed  Land  of  Room  Enough  beyond  the  ocean  bars, 
Where  the  air  is  full  of  sunlight  and  the  flag  is  full  of  stars. 

Finally,  the  flag  stands  for  the  use  of  physical 
force  where  it  becomes  necessary. 

This  simple  statement  of  facts- will  grieve  many 
good  people,  but  to  omit  it  would  be  false  to  the 
truth  and  dishonorable  to  the  flag  that  we  honor  to 
day. 

Its  origin,  as  we  have  seen,  was  in  its  service  as* 
a  rallying  point  in  battle.  We  are  still  battling,  and 
we  still  need  it.  And  at  times  our  contests  still  in 
evitably  take  the  physical  form.  One  may  earnestly 
pray  for  peace;  one  may  even  pay  his  dues  to  the 
Peace  Society  and  still  realize  that  to  preserve  peace 
we  may  have  to  use  the  sword. 

Northward,  across  the  Canadian  border,  good 
men*  are  striving  even  now  to  keep  us  in  peace  and 
to  assure  peace  to  a  neighbor  severely  torn  by  in 
ternal  conflict.  Can  any  of  us  doubt  that  our  good 
friend  and  fellow-citizen — nay,  can  anyone  doubt 
that  our  neighbors  of  the  Southern  Continent — are 
doing  their  best  to  save  human  lives,  to  preserve  our 
young  men  and  the  young  men  of  Mexico  to  build  and 
operate  machines,  to  raise  crops  and  to  rebuild  and 
beautify  cities,  instead  of  sending  them  to  fill  sol 
diers'  graves,  as  our  bravest  and  best  did  in  the  "six 
ties?"  And  yet,  should  they  succeed,  as  God  grant 
they  may,  who  can  doubt  that  what  will  give  strength 
and  effect  to  their  decisions  will  be  the  possibility  of 
force,  exerted  in  a  righteous  cause,  symbolized  by 
the  flag?  Who  can  be  sorry  that  back  of  the  flag  there 
are  earnest  men ;  nay,  that  there  are  ships  there,  and 
guns?  One  need  not  be  a  Jingo;  one  can  hate  war 

*  United    States    and    "A-B-C"    Commissions    on    the    State    of    Mexico. 


T1IE    FLAG  195 

and  love  peace  with  all  one's  heart  and  yet  rejoice 
that  the  flag  symbolizes  authority — the  ability  to 
back  up  a  decision  without  which  the  mind  itself  can 
not  decide  in  calmness  and  impartiality. 

Surely,  to  say  that  the  flag  stands  for  the  exertion 
of  force,  is  only  to  say  that  it  stands  for  peace;  for 
it  is  by  force  only,  or  by  the  possibility  of  it,  that 
peace  is  assured  and  maintained. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  many  things  for  which  our 
flag  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  stands.  We  are  right 
to  doff  our  hats  when  it  passes;  we  are  right  to  love 
it  and  to  reverence  it,  for  in  so  doing  we  are  reverenc 
ing  union,  patriotism,  liberty  and  justice.  That  it 
shall  never  become  an  empty  symbol;  that  it  shall 
never  wave  over  a  land  disunited,  animated  by  hate, 
shackled  by  indifference  and  feebleness,  permeated  by 
injustice,  unable  to  exert  that  salutary  strength 
which  alone  can  preserve  peace  without  and  with 
in — this  is  for  us  to  see  and  for  our  children  and 
grandchildren.  AVe  must  not  only  exercise  that 
"eternal  vigilance''  of  which  the  fathers  spoke,  but 
we  must  be  eternally  ready,  eternally  active.  The 
Star-Spangled  Banner!  Long  may  it  wave  over  a 
land  whose  sons  and  daughters  are  both  free  and 
brave — free  because  they  are  brave,  and  brave  be 
cause  they  are  free,  and  both  because  they  are  true 
children  of  that  eternal  father  without  whom  both 
freedom  and  bravery  are  but  empty  names. 


THE  PEOPLE'S  SHAKE  IN  THE  PUBLIC 
LIBRARY  * 

The  change  that  has  come  over  the  library  in  the 
last  half  century  may  be  described,  briefly  but  com 
prehensively,  by  saying  that  it  has  become  predomi- 
nently  a  social  institution ;  that  is,  that  its  primary 
concern  is  now  with  the  service  that  it  may  render 
to  society — to  the  people.  Books,  of  course,  were 
always  intended  to  be  read,  and  a  library  would  have 
no  meaning  were  it  never  to  be  used;  yet  in  the  old 
libraries  the  collection  and  preservation  of  the  books 
was  primary  and  their  use  secondary,  whereas  the 
modern  institution  exists  primarily  for  public  service, 
the  collection  of  the  books,  their  preservation,  and 
whatever  is  done  to  them  being  directed  to  this  end. 
To  a  social  institution — a  family,  a  school,  a  club,  a 
church  or  a  municipality — the  persons  constituting 
it,  maintaining  it,  or  served  by  it  are  all-important. 
A  family  without  parents  and  children,  a  school 
without  pupils,  a  club  without  members,  a  church 
with  no  congregation,  a  city  without  citizens — all  are 
unthinkable.  We  may  better  realize  the  change  in 
our  conception  of  the  public  library  by  noting  that 
it  has  taken  its  place  among  bodies  of  this  type.  A 
modern  library  with  no  readers  is  unthinkable;  it  is 
no  library,  as  we  now  understand  the  word;  though 
it  be  teeming  with  books,  housed  in  a  palace,  well 
cataloged  and  properly  manned. 

It  is  no  longer  possible  to  question  this  view  of 
the  library  as  a  social  institution —  a  means  of  rend 
ering  general  service  to  the  widest  public.  We  have 

*  Read   before   the    Chicago   Woman's    Club,    January    6,    1015. 


198  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SIIKLF 

to  deal  not  with  theories  of  what  the  library  ought 
to  be,  but  with  facts  indicating  what  it  actually  is; 
and  we  have  only  to  look  about  us  to  realize  that  the 
facts  give  the  fullest  measure  of  support  to  what  I 
have  just  said.     The  library  is  a  great  distributing 
agency,  the  commodities  in  which  it  deals  being  ideas 
and  its   customers  the  citizens  at  large,   who   pay, 
through  the  agency  of  taxation,  for  what  they  receive. 
This  democratic  and  civic  view  of  the  public  library's 
functions,  however,  does  not  commend  itself  to  those 
who  are  not  in  sympathy  with  democratic  ideals.     In 
a  recent  address,  a  representative  librarian  refers  to 
it  as  "the  commercial-traveler  theory11  of  the  library. 
The  implication,  of  course,  is  that  it  is  an  ignoble 
or  unworthy  theory.     I  have  no  objection  to  accept 
ing  the  phrase,  for  in  my  mind  it  has  no  such  con 
notation.     The    commercial    traveler    lias    done    the 
world    service    which    the    library    should    emulate 
rather  than   despise,      lie  is  the  advance  guard  of 
civilization.     To  speak  but  of  our  own  country  and 
of  its  recent  years,  he  is  responsible  for  much  of  our 
improvement  in  transit  facilities  and  hotel  accommo 
dations.     Personally,  lie  is  becoming  more  and  more 
acceptable.     The  best  of  our  educated  young   men 
are  going  into  commerce,   and  in   commerce  to-day 
no  one  can  reach  the  top  of  the  ladder  who  has  not 
proved  his  efficiency  "on  the  road."     Would  that  we 
could  place  men  of  his  type  at  the  head  of  all  our 
libraries! 

We  need  not  think,  however,  that  there  is  any 
thing  new  in  the  method  of  distribution  by  personal 
travel.  Homer  employed  it  when  he  wished  his 
heroic  verse  to  reach  the  great  body  of  his  country 
men.  By  personal  travel  he  took  it  to  the  cross-roads 
— just  as  the  distributor  of  food  and  clothing  and 
labor-saving  appliances  does  to-day;  just  as  we  M- 


THE    PEOPLE'S    SHARE  199 

brarians  must  do  if  we  are  to  democratize  all  litera 
ture  as  Homer  democratized  a  small  part  of  it. 
Homer,  if  you  choose  to  say  so,  adopted  the  "com 
mercial-traveler  theory"  of  literary  distribution;  but 
I  prefer  to  say  that  the  modern  public  library,  in 
laying  stress  on  the  necessity  of  distributing  its 
treasures  and  in  adopting  the  measures  that  have 
proved  /  effective  in  other  fields,  is  working  on  the 
Homeric  method. 

Now,  without  the  people  to  whom  lie  distributed 
his  wares,  Homer  would  have  been  dead  long  ago.  He 
lives  because  he  took  his  wares  to  his  audience.  And 
without  its  public,  as  we  have  already  said,  the  pub 
lic  library,  too,  would  soon  pass  into  oblivion.  It 
must  look  to  the  public  for  the  breath  of  life,  for 
the  very  blood  in  its  veins,  for  its  bone  and  sinew. 
What,  then,  is  the  part  that  the  community  may  play 
in  increasing  the  efficiency  of  a  public  institution  like 
the  public  library?  Such  an  institution  is,  first  of 
all,  a  medium  through  which  the  community  does 
something  for  itself.  The  community  employs  and 
supports  it,  and  at  the  same  time  is  served  by  it.  To 
use  another  homely  illustration,  which  I  am  sure  will 
not  please  those  who  object  to  comparing  great  things 
with  small,  this  type  of  relationship  is  precisely  what 
we  find  in  domestic  service.  A  cook  or  a  housemaid 
has  a  dual  relation  to  the  mistress  of  the  house,  who 
is  at  the  same  time  her  employer  and  the  person  that 
she  directly  serves.  This  sort  of  relation  does  not 
obtain,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of  a  railroad  em 
ploye,  who  is  responsible  to  one  set  of  persons  and 
serves  another.  The  public  library  is  established  and 
maintained  by  a  given  community  in  order  that  it 
may  perform  certain  service  for  that  same  com- 
nmnity  directly.  It  seems  to  me  that  this  dual  rela 
tionship  ought  to  make  for  efficiency.  If  it  does  not, 


200  LIBKA1UAN\S    OPEN    SHELF 

it  is  because  its  existence  and  significance  are  not 
always  realized.  The  cook  knows  that  if  she  does 
nx)t  cook  to  suit  her  mistress  she  will  lose  her  job— 
the  thing  works  almost  automatically.  If  the  rail 
road  employe  does  not  serve  the  public,  satisfactorily 
there  is  no  such  immediate  reaction,  although  I  do 
not  deny  that  the  public  displeasure  may  ultimately 
reach  the  railroad  authorities  and  through  them  the 
employe.  In  most  public  institutions  the  reaction  is 
necessarily  somewhat  indirect.  The  post  office  is  a 
public  institution,  but  public  opinion  must  act  on 
it  generally  through  the  channels  of  Congressional 
legislation,  which  takes  time.  Owing  to  this  fact, 
very  few  postmen,  for  instance,  realize  that  the  per 
sons  to  whom  they  deliver  letters  are  also  their  em 
ployers.  In  all  libraries  the  machinery  of  reaction  is 
not  the  same.  In  St.  Louis,  for  instance,  the  library 
receives  the  proceeds  of  a  tax  voted  directly  by  the 
people;  in  New  York  City  it  receives  an  appropria 
tion  voted  by  the  Board  of  Apportionment,  whose 
members  are  elected  by  the  people.  The  St.  Louis 
Public  Library  is  therefore  one  step  nearer  the  con 
trol  of  the  people  than  the  New  York  Public  Library. 
If  we  could  imagine  the  management  of  either  library 
to  become  so  objectionable  as  to  make  its  abolition 
desirable,  a  petition  for  a  special  election  could  re 
move  public  support  in  St.  Louis  very  soon.  In  New 
York  the  matter  might  have  to  become  an  issue  in 
a  general  election,  at  which  members  of  a  Board  of 
Apportionment  should  be  elected  under  pledge  to 
vote  against  the  library's  appropriation.  Never 
theless,  in  both  cases  there  is  ultimate  popular  con 
trol.  Owing  to  this  dual  relation,  the  public  can 
promote  the  efficiency  of  the  library  in  two  ways— 
by  controlling  it  properly  and  by  its  attitude  toward 
the  service  that  is  rendered.  Every  member  of  the 


THE    PEOPLE'S    SHARE  201 

public,  in  fact,  is  related  to  the  library  somewhat  as 
a  railway  stockholder,  riding  on  a  train,  is  related 
to  the  company.  He  is  at  once  boss  and  beneficiary. 

Let  us  see  first  what  the  public  can  do  for  its 
library  through  its  relation  of  control.  Besides  the 
purse-strings,  which  we  have  seen  are  sometimes  held 
directly  by  the  public  and  sometimes  by  its  elected 
representatives,  we  must  consider  the  governing 
board  of  the  institution — its  trustees  or  directors. 
These  may  be  elected  by  the  people  or  appointed  by 
an  elected  officer,  such  as  the  mayor,  or  chosen  by 
an  elected  body,  such  as  the  city  council  or  the  board 
of  education. 

Let  us  take  the  purse-strings  first.  Does  your 
public  library  get  enough  public  money  to  enable  it 
to  do  the  work  that  it  ought  to  do?  What  is  the 
general  impression  about  this  in  the  community? 
What  does  the  library  board  think?  WThat  does  the 
librarian  think?  What  do  the  members  of  his  staff 
say?  What  has  the  library's  annual  report  to  say 
about  it?  It  is  not  at  all  a  difficult  matter  for  the 
citizen  to  get  information  on  this  subject  and  to  form 
his  own  opinion  regarding  it.  Yet  it  is  an  unusual 
thing  to  find  a  citizen  who  has  either  the  information 
or  a  well-considered  opinion.  The  general  impres 
sion  always  seems  to  be  that  the  library  has  plenty 
of  money — rather  more,  in  fact,  than  it  can 
legitimately  use.  It  is  probably  well  for  the  library, 
under  these  circumstances,  that  the  public  control 
of  its  purse-strings  is  indirect.  If  the  citizens  of  an 
average  American  city  had  to  go  to  the  polls  annually 
and  vote  their  public  library  an  appropriation,  I  am 
sure  that  most  libraries  would  have  to  face  a  very 
material  reduction  of  their  income. 

The  trouble  about  this  impression  is  that  it  is 
gained  without  knowledge  of  the  facts.  If  a  majority 


•20'2  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

of  tlie  citizens,  understanding  how  much  work  a 
modern  public  library  is  expected  to  do  and  how  their 
own  library  does  it,  should  deliberately  conclude  that 
its  management  was  extravagant,  and  that  its  ex 
penditure  should  be  cut  down,  the  minority  would 
have  nothing  to  do,  as  good  citizens,  but  submit.  The 
citizens  have  nothing  to  say  as  directly  as  this,  but 
the  idea,  so  generally  held,  that  libraries -are  well  off, 
does  operate  in  the  long  run  to  limit  library  appro 
priations  and  to  prevent  the  library  from  doing  much 
useful  work  that  it  might  do  and  ought  to  do. 

It  is  then,  every  citizen's  business,  as  I  conceive 
it,  to  inform  himself  or  herself  of  the  work  that  the 
public  library  is  doing,  of  that  which  it  is  leaving  un 
done,  and  of  the  possibilities  of  increased  appropria 
tions.  If  the  result  is  a  realization  that  the  library 
appropriation  is  inadequate,  that  realization  should 
take  the  form  of  a  statement  that  will  sooner  or  later 
reach  the  ears,  and  tend  to  stimulate  the  action,  of 
those  directly  responsible.  And  it  should,  above  all, 
aid  in  the  formation  of  a  sound  public  opinion.  Ours 
is,  we  are  told,  a  government  of  public  opinion.  Such 
government  will  necessarily  be  good  or  bad  as  public 
opinion  is  based  on  matured  judgment  or  only  on 
fleeting  impressions. 

Inadequacy  of  support  is  responsible  for  more  li 
brary  delinquency  than  the  average  citizen  imagines. 
Many  a  librarian  is  deservedly  condemned  for  the 
unsatisfactory  condition  of  his  institution  when  his 
fault  is  not,  as  his  detractors  think,  failure  to  see 
what  should  be  done,  or  lack  of  ability  to  do  it,  so 
much  as  inability  to  raise  funds  to  do  it  with.  This 
is  doubtless  a  fault,  and  its  possessor  should  suffer, 
but  how  about  the  equally  guilty  accessories?  How 
about  the  city  authorities  who  have  failed  to  vote  the 
library  adequate  support?  How  about  the  board  of 


THE    PEOPLE'S    SHAKE  203 

trustees  who  have  accepted  such  a  situation  without 
protest?  And  what  is  more  to  our  purpose  here,  how 
about  the  citizens  who  have  limited  their  efforts  to 
pointing  out  the  cracks  in  the  edifice,  with  not  a  bit 
of  constructive  work  in  propping  it  up  and  making 
possible  its  restoration  to  strength  and  soundness? 

In  conversation  with  a  friend,  not  long  ago,  I  re 
ferred  to  the  financial  limitations  of  our  library's 
work,  and  said  that  we  could  add  to  it  greatly  and 
render  more  acceptable  service  if  our  income  were 
larger.  He  expressed  great  surprise,  and  said : 
"Why,  I  thought  you  had  all  the  money  you  want; 
your  income  must  be  all  of  $100,000  a  year.''  Now, 
our  income  actually  is  about  $250,000,  but  how  could 
I  tell  him  that?  I  judiciously  changed  the  subject. 

Let  us  look  next,  if  you  please,  at  the  library 
board  and  examine  some  of  its  functions.  There  ap 
pears  to  be  much  public  misapprehension  of  the 
duties  of  this  body,  and  such  misapprehension  as 
sumes  various  and  opposing  forms.  Some  appear  to 
think  that  the  librarian  is  responsible  for  all  that 
is  done  in  the  library  and  that  his  board  is  a  per 
functory  body.  Others  seem  to  believe  that  the  board 
is  the  direct  administrative  head  of  the  library,  in 
all  of  its  working  details  and  that  the  librarian  is 
its  executive  in  the  limited  sense  of  doing  only  those 
things  that  he  is  told  to  do.  Unfortunately  there  are 
libraries  that  are  operated  in  each  of  these  ways,  but 
neither  one  relationship  nor  the  other,  nor  any  modi 
fication  of  either,  is  the  ideal  one  between  a  librarian 
and  his  board.  The  board  is  supreme,  of  course,  but 
it  is  a  body  of  non-experts  who  have  employed  an 
expert  to  bring  about  certain  results.  They  ought  to 
know  what  they  want,  and  what  they  have  a  right  to 
expect,  and  if  their  expert  does  not  give  them  this,  the 


204  LIBKAEIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

relation  between  him  and  them  should  terminate ;  but 
if  they  are  men  of  sense  they  will  not  attempt  to  dic 
tate  methods  or  supervise  details.  They  are  the 
delegated  representatives  of  the  great  public,  which 
owns  the  library  and  operates  it  for  a  definite  pur 
pose.  It  is  this  function  of  the  board  as  the  repre 
sentative  of  the  public  that  should  be  emphasized 
here.  Has  the  public  a  definite  idea  of  what  it  wants 
from  the  public  library,  and  of  what  is  reasonable 
for  it  to  ask?  If  so,  is  it  satisfied  that  it  is  repre 
sented  by  a  board  that  is  of  the  same  mind?  The 
citizens  may  be  assured  that  the  composition  of  the 
library  board  rests  ultimately  upon  its  will.  If  the 
board  is  elective,  this  is  obvious;  if  appointive,  the 
appointing  officer  or  body  would  hardly  dare  to  go 
counter  to  the  expressed  desire  of  the  citizens. 

What  has  been  said  above  may  be  put  into  a  very 
few  words.  The  public  library  is  public  property, 
owned  and  controlled  by  the  citizens.  Every  citizen, 
therefore,  should  be  interested  in  setting  standards 
for  it  and  playing  his  part  toward  making  it  con 
form  to  them — in  seeing  that  its  governing  body  rep 
resents  him  in  also  recognizing  those  standards  and 
trying  to  maintain  them — in  laboring  for  such  a  due 
apportionment  of  the  public  funds  as  shall  not  make 
an  attempt  to  live  up  to  such  standards  a  mere  farce. 

So  much  for  the  things  that  the  citizen  can  and 
should  do  in  his  capacity  of  library  boss.  His  possi 
bilities  as  a  beneficiary  are  still  more  interesting  and 
valuable. 

Perhaps  you  remember  the  story  of  the  man  who 
attempted  to  board  the  warship  and,  on  being  asked 
his  business,  replied,  "I'm  one  of  the  owners."  One 
version  of  the  tale  then  goes  on  to  relate  how  the 
sailor  thus  addressed  picked  up  a  splinter  from  the 


THE    PEOPLE'S    SHAKE  205 

deck,  and,  handing  it  to  the  visitor,  remarked: 
"Well,  I  guess  that's  about  your  share.  Take  it  and 
get  out!" 

I  have  always  sympathized  with  the  sailor  rather 
than  with  his  visitor.  Most  of  us  librarians  have  had 
experiences  with  these  bumptious  "owners''  of  public 
property.  The  fact  has  already  been  noted  that  in 
a  case  like  this  the  citizen  is  both  an  owner  and  a 
beneficiary.  He  has  duties  and  privileges  in  both 
capacities,  but  he  sometimes  acts  the  owner  in  the 
wrong  place.  The  man  on  the  warship  was  doubtless 
an  owner,  but  at  that  particular  moment  he  was  only 
a  visitor,  subject  to  whatever  rules  might  govern 
visitors;  and  he  should  have  acted  as  such.  Every 
citizen  is  a  part  owner  of  the  public  library;  he 
should  never  forget  that  fact.  We  have  seen  how  he 
may  effectively  assert  his  ownership  and  control. 
But  when  he  enters  the  library  to  use  it  his  role  is 
that  of  beneficiary,  and  he  should  act  as  such.  He 
may  so  act  and  at  the  same  time  be  of  the  greatest 
service  to  the  institution  which  he,  as  a  member  of 
the  public,  has  created  and  is  maintaining. 

I  know  of  no  way  in  which  a  man  may  show  his 
good  citizenship  or  the  reverse — may  either  demon 
strate  his  ability  and  willingness  to  live  and  work  in 
community  harness,  or  show  that  he  is  fit  for  nothing 
but  individual  wild  life  in  the  woods — better  than 
in  his  use  of  such  a  public  institution  as  a  library. 
The  man  who  cannot  see  that  what  he  gets  from  such 
an  institution  must  necessarily  be  obtained  at  the 
price  of  sacrifice — that  others  in  the  community  are 
also  entitled  to  their  share,  and  that  sharing  always 
means  yielding — that  man  has  not  yet  learned  the 
first  lesson  in  the  elements  of  civic  virtue.  And  when 
one  sees  a  thousand  citizens,  each  of  whom  would 
surely  raise  his  voice  in  protest  if  the  library  were 


206  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

to  waste  public  money  by  buying  a  thousand  copies 
of  the  latest  novel,  yet  find  fault  with  the  library  be 
cause  each  cannot  borrow  it  before  all  the  others,  one 
is  tempted  to  wonder  whether  we  really  have  here  a 
thousand  bad  citizens  or  whether  their  early  educa 
tion  in  elementary  arithmetic  has  been  neglected. 

Before  the  present  era  there  were  regulations  in 
all  institutions  that  seemed  to  be  framed  merely  to 
exasperate — to  put  the  public  in  its  place  and  chas 
ten  its  spirit.  There  are  now  no  such  rules  in  good 
libraries.  He  who  thinks  there  are  may  find  that 
there  is  a  difference  of  opinion  between  him  and  those 
whom  he  has  set  in  charge  of  the  library  regarding 
what  is  arbitrary  and  what  is  necessary;  but  at  any 
rate  he  will  discover  that  the  animating  spirit  of 
modern  library  authority  is  to  give  all  an  equal  share 
in  what  it  has  to  offer,  and  to  restrain  one  man  no 
more  than  is  necessary  to  insure  to  his  brother  the 
measure  of  privilege  to  which  all  are  equally  en 
titled. 

Another  way  in  which  the  citizen,  in  his  capacity 
of  the  library's  beneficiary,  can  aid  it  and  improve  its 
service  is  his  treatment  of  its  administrators.  Li 
brarians  are  very  human:  they  react  quickly  and 
surely  to  praise  or  blame,  deserved  or  undeserved. 
Blame  is  what  they  chiefly  get.  Sometimes  they  de 
serve  it  and  sometimes  not.  But  the  occasions  on 
which  some  citizen  steps  in  and  says,  "Well  done, 
good  and  faithful  servant,"  are  rare  indeed.  The  pub 
lic  servant  has  to  interpret  silence  as  praise ;  so  sure 
is  he  that  the  least  slip  will  be  caught  and  con 
demned  by  a  vigilant  public.  No  one  can  object  to 
discriminating  criticism;  it  is  a  potent  aid  to  good 
administration.  Mere  petulant  fault-finding,  how 
ever,  especially  if  based  on  ignorance  or  misappre 
hension,  does  positive  harm.  And  a  little  discrimi- 


THE    PEOPLE'S    SHARE  -'07 

nating  praise,  now  and  then,  is  a  wonderful  stimu 
lant.  No  service  is  possible  without  the  men  and 
women  who  render  it;  and  the  quality  of  service  de 
pends,  more  than  we  often  realize,  on  the  spirit  and 
temper  of  a  staff — something  that  is  powerfully  af 
fected,  either  for  good  or  for  evil,  by  public  action 
and  public  response. 

Years  ago,  at  a  branch  library  in  a  distant  city, 
a  reader  stood  at  the  counter  and  complained  loudly 
because  the  library  would  not  send  her  a  postal  re 
serve  notice  unless  she  defrayed  the  cost,  which  was 
one  cent.  The  assistant  to  whom  she  was  talking 
had  no  option  in  the  matter  and  was  merely  enforc 
ing  a  rule  common,  so  far  as  I  know,  to  all  American 
public  libraries ;  but  she  had  to  bear  the  brunt  of  the 
reader's  displeasure,  which  she  did  meekly,  as  it  was 
all  in  the  day's  work.  The  time  occupied  in  this  use 
less  business  spelled  delay  to  half  a  dozen  other 
readers,  who  were  waiting  their  turn.  Finally,  one 
of  them,  a  quiet  little  old  lady  in  black,  spoke  up  as 
follows :  "Rome  of  us  hereabouts  think  that  we  owe 
a  great  debt  of  gratitude  to  this  library.  Its  as 
sistants  have  rendered  service  to  us  that  we  can  never 
repay.  I  am  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  to  do  some 
thing  in  return,  and  it  therefore  gives  me  pleasure 
to  pay  the  cent  about  which  you  are  taking  up  this 
young  lady's  time,  and  ours."  So  saying,  she  laid  the 
coin  on  the  desk  and  the  line  moved  on.  I  have 
always  remembered  these  two  points  of  view  as 
typical  of  two  kinds  of  library  users.  Their  respec 
tive  effects  on  the  temper  and  work  of  a  library  staff 
need,  I  am  sure,  no  explanation. 

In  what  I  have  said,  which  is  such  a  small  frac 
tion  of  what  might  be  said,  that  I  am  almost  ashamed 
to  offer  it  to  you,  I  have  in  truth  only  been  playing 
the  variations  on  one  tune,  which  is — Draw  closer 


208  LIBBABIAN'S    Ol'EN    SHELF 

to  the  library,  as  it  is  trying  to  draw  closer  to  you. 
There  is  no  such  thing,  physicists  tell  us,  as  a  one 
sided  force.  Every  force  is  but  one  aspect  of  a  stress, 
which  includes  also  an  equal  and  opposing  force. 
Any  two  interacting  things  in  this  world  are  either 
approaching  each  other  or  receding  from  each  other. 
So  it  should  be  with  library  and  public.  A  forward 
movement  on  the  one  hand  should  necessarily  involve 
one  to  meet  it. 

The  peculiarity  of  our  modern  temper  is  our 
hunger  for  facts — our  confidence  that  when  the  facts 
are  known  we  shall  find  a  way  to  deal  with  them, 
and  that  until  the  facts  are  known  we  shall  not  be 
able  to  act — not  even  to  think.  Our  ancestors 
thought  and  acted  sometimes  on  premises  that  seem 
to  us  frightfully  flimsy — they  tried,  as  Dean  Swift 
painted  them  in  his  immortal  satire,  to  get  sunbeams 
from  cucumbers.  There  are  some  sunbeam-chasers 
among  us  to-day,  but  even  they  recognize  the  need 
of  real  cucumbers  to  start  with;  the  imaginary  kind 
will  not  do.  I  recently  heard  a  great  teacher  of 
medicine  say  that  the  task  of  the  modern  physician 
is  merely  to  ascertain  the  facts  on  which  the  intelli 
gent  public  is  to  act.  How  different  that  sounds 
from  the  dicta  of  the  medicine  of  a  past  generation ! 
It  is  the  same  everywhere:  we  are  demanding  an  ac 
curate  survey — an  ascertainment  of  the  facts  in  any 
field  in  which  action,  based  on  inference  and  judg 
ment,  is  seen  to  be  necessary.  Now  the  library  is 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  storehouse  of  recorded 
facts.  It  is  becoming  so  more  truly  and  more  fully 
every  day,  thereby  adjusting  itself  to  the  modern 
temper  of  which  I  have  already  spoken.  The  library 
and  its  users  are  coming  more  closely  together,  in 
sympathy,  in  aims  and  in  action,  than  ever  before— 
partly  a  result  and  partly  a  justification  for  that 


THE    PEOPLE'S    SHAKE  20U 

Homeric  method  of  popularizing  it  which  has  been 
characterized  and  condemned  as  commercial.  The 
day  when  the  librarian,  or  the  professor,  or  the 
clergyman  could  retire  into  his  tower  and  hold  aloof 
from  the  vulgar  herd  is  past.  The  logical  result  of 
such  an  attitude  is  now  being  worked  out  on  the  con 
tinent  of  Europe.  Not  civilizations,  as  some  pessi 
mists  are  lamenting,  but  the  forces  antagonistic  to 
civilization  are  there  destroying  one  another,  and 
there  is  hope  that  a  purified  democracy  will  arise 
from  the  wreckage.  May  our  American  civilization 
never  have  to  run  the  gantlet  of  such  a  terrible  trial ! 
Meanwhile,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  hope 
for  the  future  efficiency  of  all  our  public  institutions, 
including  the  library,  lies  in  the  success  of  democ 
racy,  and  that  depends  on  the  existence  and  improve 
ment  of  the  conditions  in  whose  absence  democracy 
necessarily  fails.  Foremost  among  these  is  the  homo 
geneity  of  the  population.  The  people  among  whom 
democracy  succeeds  must  have  similar  standards, 
ideas,  aims  and  abilities.  Democracy  may  exist  in  a 
pack  of  wolves,  but  not  in  a  group  that  is  half  wolves 
and  half  men.  Either  the  wolves  will  kill  the  men  or 
the  men  the  wolves.  This  is  an  extreme  case,  but  it  is 
true  in  general  that  in  a  community  made  up  of  ir 
reconcilable  elements  there  can  be  no  true  democracy. 
And  the  same  oneness  of  vision  and  purpose  that  con 
duces  to  the  success  of  democracy  will  also  bring  to 
perfection  such  great  democratic  institutions  as  the 
library,  which  have  already  borne  such  noteworthy 
fruit  among  us  just  because  we  are  homogeneous  be 
yond  all  other  nations  on  the  earth.  And  here  prog 
ress  is  by  action  and  reaction,  as  we  see  it  so  often  in 
the  world.  The  unity  of  aims  and  abilities  that 
makes  democracy  and  democratic  institutions  possi 
ble  is  itself  facilitated  and  increased  bv  the  work  of 


'210  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

those  institutions.  The  more  work  the  library  does, 
the  more  its  ramifications  multiply,  and  the  further 
they  extend,  the  more  those  conditions  are  favored 
that  make  the  continuance  of  the  library  possible.  In 
working  for  others,  it  is  working  for  itself,  and  every 
additional  bit  of  strength  and  sanity  that  it  takes  on 
does  but  enable  it  to  work  for  others  the  more.  And 
if  the  democracy  whose  servant  it  is  will  but  realize 
that  it  has  grown  up  as  a  part  of  that  American  sys 
tem  to  which  we  are  all  committed — to  which  we  owe 
all  that  we  are  and  in  which  we  must  place  all  our 
hopes  for  the  future — then  neither  democracy  nor  li 
brary  will  have  aught  to  fear.  Democracy  will  have 
its  "true  and  laudable"  service  from  the  library,  and 
the  library  in  its  turn  will  have  adequate  sympathy, 
aid  and  support  from  the  people. 

It  is  no  accident  that  I  make  this  appeal  for  sym 
pathy  and  aid  to  a  club  composed  of  women.  The 
bonds  between  the  modern  public  library  and  the 
modern  woman's  club  have  been  particularly  strong 
in  this  country.  The  two  institutions  have  grown  up 
together,  making  their  way  against  suspicion,  con 
tempt  and  hostility,  aided  by  the  same  public  de 
mand,  and  now,  when  both  are  recognized  as  elements 
in  the  intellectual  strength  of  our  nation,  they  are 
rendering  mutual  service.  The  club  turns  to  the  li 
brary  daily.  Hitherto  the  library  has  turned  to  the 
club  only  in  some  emergency — a  bill  to  be  passed,  an 
appropriation  to  be  made,  an  administration  to  be 
purified.  I  have  tried  to  show  you  how,  apart  from 
these  great  services,  which  no  one  would  think  of 
minimizing,  the  women  of  this  country,  as  citizens, 
can  uphold  the  hands  of  the  library  daily.  Ours  is  a 
jrovernment  of  public  opinion,  and  in  the  formation 
of  that  opinion  there  is  no  more  powerful  element 


THE    PEOPLE'S    SHARE  211 

than  the  sentiment  of  our  women,  especially  when 
organized  in  such  bodies  as  yours. 

"To  be  aristocratic  in  taste  and  democratic  in  ser 
vice,"  says  Bliss  Perry,  "is  the  privilege  and  glory  of 
the  public  library."  In  appealing  thus  to  both  your 
aristocracy  and  your  democracy,  I  feel,  then,  that  I 
have  not  gone  astray. 


SOME  TENDENCIES  OF  AMERICAN 
THOUGHT* 

The  modern  American  mind,  like  modern  Amer 
ica,  itself,  is  a  melting  pot.  We  are  taking  men  arid 
women  of  all  races  and  fusing  them  into  Americans. 
In  the  same  way  we  are  taking  points  of  view,  ideas, 
standards  and  modes  of  action  from  whatever  source 
we  find  them,  combining  them  and  fusing  them  into 
what  will  one  day  become  American  thoughts  and 
standards.  We  are  thus  combining  the  most  varied 
and  opposing  things — things  that  it  would  seem  im 
possible  to  put  together.  Take  our  modern  American 
tendency  in  government,  for  instance.  Could  there 
be  two  things  more  radically  different  than  despotism 
and  democracy? — the  rule  of  the  one  and  the  rule  of 
the  many?  And  yet  I  believe  that  we  are  taking  steps 
toward  a  very  successful  combination  of  the  two. 
Such  a  combination  is  essentially  ancient.  No  des 
potism  can  hold  its  own  without  the  consent  of  the 
governed.  That  consent  may  be  unwilling  and  sooner 
or  later  it  is  then  withheld,  with  the  result  that  a 
revolution  takes  place  and  the  despot  loses  his  throne 
—the  oldest  form  of  the  recall.  Every  despotism  is 
thus  tempered  by  revolution,  and  Anglo-Saxon  com 
munities  have  been  ready  to  exercise  such  a  privilege 
on  the  slightest  sign  that  a  despotic  tendency  was 
creeping  into  their  government. 

It  is  not  remarkable,  then,  that  our  own  Federal 
government,  which  is  essentially  a  copy  of  the  British 
government  of  its  day,  should  have  incorporated  this 

*  Read  before  the  New  York  Library  Association  at  Squirrel  Inn, 
Haines  Falls,  September  28,  1915. 


214  LIBBABIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

feature  of  the  recall,  which  in  England  had  just 
passed  from  its  revolutionary  to  its  legal  stage.  It 
was  beginning  to  be  recognized  then  that  a  vote  of  the 
people's  representatives  could  recall  a  monarch,  and 
the  English  monarchy  is  now  essentially  elective.  But 
to  make  assurance  doubly  sure,  the  British  govern 
ment,  in  its  later  evolution,  has  been  practically  sep 
arated  from  the  monarch's  person,  and  any  govern 
ment  may  be  simply  overthrown  or  "recalled"  by  a 
vote  of  lack  of  confidence  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
followed,  if  need  be,  by  a  defeat  in  a  general  election. 
We  have  not  yet  adopted  this  feature.  Our  Presi 
dent  is  still  the  head  of  our  government,  and  he  and 
all  other  elected  Federal  officers  serve  their  terms 
out,  no  matter  whether  the  people  have  confidence  in 
them  or  not.  But  the  makers  of  our  Constitution  im 
proved  on  the  British  government  as  they  found  it. 
They  made  the  term  of  the  executive  four  years  in 
stead  of  life  and  systematized  the  "recall"  by  provid 
ing  for  impeachment  proceedings — a  plan  already 
recognized  in  Britain  in  the  case  of  certain  admin 
istrative  and  judicial  officers. 

As  it  stands  at  present  we  have  a  temporary  elec 
tive  monarch  with  more  power,  even  nominally,  than 
most  European  constitutional  monarchs  and  more 
actually  than  many  so-called  absolute  monarchs  such 
as  the  Czar  or  the  Sultan.  In  case  he  should  abuse 
the  power  that  we  have  given  him,  he  may  be  removed 
from  office  after  due  trial,  by  our  elected  representa 
tives. 

In  following  out  these  ideas  in  later  years,  we  are 
gradually  evolving  a  form  of  government  that  is  both 
more  despotic  and  more  democratic.  We  are  combin 
ing  the  legislative  and  executive  power  in  the  hands 
of  a  few  persons,  hampering  them  very  little  in  their 
exercise  of  it,  and  making  it  possible  to  recall  them 


AMERICAN    THOUGHT  215 

by  direct  vote  of  the  body  of  citizens  that  elected 
them.  I  think  we  may  describe  the  tendency  of  pub 
lic  thought  in  governmental  matters  as  a  tendency 
toward  a  despotism  under  legalized  democratic  con 
trol.  It  may  be  claimed,  I  think,  that  the  best 
features  of  despotism  and  democracy  may  thus  be 
utilized,  with  a  minimum  of  the  evils  of  each. 

It  was  believed  by  the  ancients,  and  we  frequently 
see  it  stated  today,  that  the  ideal  government  would 
be  government  by  a  perfectly  good  despot.  This  takes 
the  citizens  into  account  only  as  persons  who  are  gov 
erned,  and  not  as  persons  who  govern  or  help  to  gov 
ern.  It  is  pleasant,  perhaps,  to  have  plenty  of  ser 
vants  to  wait  upon  one,  but  surely  health,  physical, 
mental  and  moral,  waits  on  him  who  does  most  things 
for  himself.  I  once  heard  Lincoln  StefFens  say: 
"What  we  want  is  not  'Good  Government' ;  it  is  Self- 
Government."  But  is  it  not  possible  to  get  the  ad 
vantage  of  government  by  a  few,  with  its  possibilities 
of  continuous  policy  and  its  freedom  from  "crowd- 
psychology,"  with  its  skillful  utilization  of  expert 
knowledge,  while  admitting  the  public  to  full  knowl 
edge  of  what  is  going  on,  and  full  ultimate  control  of 
it?  We  evidently  think  so,  and  our  present  tenden 
cies  are  evidence  that  we  are  attempting  something  of 
the  kind.  Our  belief  seems  to  be  that  if  we  elect  our 
despot  and  are  able  to  recall  him  we  shall  have  to 
keep  tab  on  him  pretty  closely,  and  that  the  knowl 
edge  of  statecraft  that  will  thus  be  necessary  to  us 
will  be  no  less  than  if  we  personally  took  part  in  leg 
islation  and  administration — probably  far  more  than 
if  we  simply  went  through  the  form  of  delegating  our 
responsibilities  and  then  took  no  further  thought,  as 
most  of  us  have  been  accustomed  to  do. 

Whether  this  is  the  right  view  or  not — whether  it 
is  workable — the  future  will  show ;  I  am  here  discuss- 


216  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

ing  tendencies,  not  their  ultimate  outcome.  But  it 
would  be  too  much  to  expect  that  this  or  any  other 
eclectic  policy  should  be  pleasing  to  all. 

"The  real /problem  of  collectivism/'  says  Walter 
Lippmann,  "is  the  difficulty  of  combining  popular 
control  with  administrative  power.  .  .  .  The  con 
flict  between  democracy  and  centralized  authority 
...  is  the  line  upon  which  the  problems  of  collectiv 
ism  will  be  fought  out." 

In  selecting  elements  from  both  despotism  and 
democracy  we  are  displeasing  the  adherents  of  both. 
There  is  too  much  despotism  in  the  plan  for  one  side 
and  too  much  democracy  for  the  other.  We  con 
stantly  hear  the  complaint  that  concentrated  respon 
sibility  Avit-li  popular  control  is  too  despotic,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  criticism  that  it  is  too  democratic. 
To  put  your  city  in  the  hands  of  a  small  commission, 
perhaps  of  a  city  manager,  seems  to  some  to  be  a  re 
turn  to  monarchy;  and  so  perhaps  it  is.  To  give  Tom, 
Dick  and  Harry  the  power  to  unseat  these  monarchs 
at  will  is  said  to  be  dangerously  socialistic ;  and  pos 
sibly  it  is.  Only  it  is  possible  that  by  combining 
these  two  poisons — this  acid  and  this  alkali — in  the 
same  pill,  we  are  neutralizing  their  harmful  qualities. 
At  any  rate  this  would  seem  to  be  the  idea  on  which 
we  are  now  proceeding. 

We  may  now  examine  the  effects  of  this  tendency 
toward  eclecticism  in  quite  a  different  field — that  of 
morals.  Among  the  settlers  of  our  country  were  both 
Puritans  and  Cavaliers — representatives  in  England 
of  two  moral  standards  that  have  contended  there  for 
centuries  and  still  exist  there  side  by  side.  We  in 
America  are  attempting  to  mix  them  with  some  mea 
sure  of  success.  This  was  detected  by  the  German 
lady  of  whom  Mr.  Bryce  tells  in  his  "American  Com 
monwealth,"  who  said  that  American  women  wero 


AMERICAN    THOUGHT  217 

"furchtbar  frci  und  furchtbar  fromm" — frightfully 
free  and  frightfully  pious !  In  other  words  they  are 
trying  to  mix  the  Cavalier  and  Puritan  standards. 
Of  course  those  who  do  not  understand  what  is  going 
on  think  that  we  are  either  too  free  or  too  pious.  We 
are  neither ;  we  are  trying  to  give  and  accept  freedom 
in  cases  where  freedom  works  for  moral  efficiency  and 
restraint  where  restraint  is  indicated.  We  have  riot 
arrived  at  a  final  standard.  We  may  not  do  so.  This 
effort  at  mixture,  like  all  our  others,  may  fail;  but 
there  appears  to  be  no  doubt  that  we  are  making  it. 
To  take  an  obvious  instance,  I  believe  that  we  are  try 
ing,  with  some  success,  to  combine  ease  of  divorce 
with  a  greater  real  regard  for  .the  sanctity  of  mar 
riage.  We  have  found  that  if  marriage  is  made  abso 
lutely  indissoluble,  there  will  be  greater  excuse  for 
disregarding  the  marriage  vow  than  if  there  are  legal 
ways  of  dissolving  it. 

Americans  are  shocked  at  Europeans  when  they 
allude  in  ordinary  conversation  to  infractions  of  the 
moral  code  that  they  treat  as  trivial.  They  on  the 
other  hand  are  shocked  when  we  talk  of  divorce  for 
what  they  consider  insufficient  causes.  In  the  former 
case  we  seem  to  them  "frightfully  pious" ;  in  the  lat 
ter,  "f rightfully  free."  They  are  right;  we  are  both; 
it  is  only  another  instance  of  our  tendency  towards 
eclecticism,  this  time  in  moral  standards. 

In  some  directions  we  find  that  this  tendency  to 
eclecticism  is  working  toward  a  combination  not  or 
two  opposite  things,  but  of  a  hundred  different  ones. 
Take  our  art  for  instance,  especially  as  manifested  in 
our  architecture.  A  purely  native  town  in  Italy,  Ara 
bia,  or  Africa,  or  Mexico,  has  its  own  atmosphere;  no 
one  could  mistake  one  for  the  other  any  more  than  he 
could  mistake  a  beaver  dam  for  an  ant  hill  or  a  bird's 
nest  for  a  woodchuck  hole. 


218  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

But  in  an  American  city,  especially  where  we 
have  enough  money  to  let  our  architects  do  their  ut 
most,  we  find  streets  where  France,  England,  Italy, 
Spain,  Holland,  Arabia  and  India  all  stand  elbow  to 
elbow,  and  the  European  visitor  know^s  not  whether 
to  laugh  or  to  make  a  hasty  visit  to  his  nerve-special 
ist.  It  seems  all  right  to  us,  and  it  is  all  right  from 
the  standpoint  of  a  nation  that  is  yet  in  the  throes  of 
eclecticism.  And  our  other  art — painting,  sculpture, 
music — it  is  all  similarly  mixed.  Good  of  its  kind, 
often ;  but  we  have  not  yet  settled  down  to  the  kind 
that  we  like  best — the  kind  in  which  we  are  best  fitted 
to  do  something  that  will  live  through  the  ages. 

We  used  to  think  for  instance  that  in  music  the 
ordinary  diatonic  major  scale,  with  its  variant  minor, 
was  a  fact  of  nature.  We  knew  vaguely  that  the 
ancient  Greeks  had  other  scales,  and  we  knewr  also 
that  the  Chinese  and  the  Arabs  had  scales  so  different 
that  their  music  wras  generally  displeasing  to  us. 
But  we  explained  this  by  saying  that  our  scale  was 
natural  and  right  and  that  the  others  were  anti 
quated,  barbaric  and  wrong.  Now  we  are  opening 
our  arms  to  the  exotic  scales  and  devising  a  few  of 
our  own.  We  have  the  tonal  and  the  semi-tonal 
scales  and  we  are  trying  to  make  use  of  the  Chinese, 
Arabic  and  Hindu  modes.  We  are  producing  results 
that  sound  very  odd  to  ears  that  are  attuned  to  the 
old-fashioned  music,  but  our  eclecticism  here  as  else 
where  is  cracking  the  shell  of  prejudice  and  will 
doubtless  lead  to  some  good  end,  though  perhaps  we 
can  not  see  it  yet. 

How  about  education?  In  the  first  place  there 
are,  as  I  read  the  history  of  education,  twro  main 
methods  of  training  youth — the  individual  method 
and  the  class  method.  No  two  boys  or  girls  are  alike ; 
no  two  have  like  reactions  to  the  samo  stimulus. 


AMERICAN    THOUGHT  219 

Each  ought  to  have  a  separate  teacher,  for  the  meth 
ods  to  be  employed  must  be  adapted  especially  to  the 
material  on  which  we  have  to  work.  This  means  a 
separate  tutor  for  every  child. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  training  that  we  give  must 
be  social — must  prepare  for  life  with  and  among 
one's  fellow  beings,  otherwise  it  is  worthless.  This 
means  training  in  class,  with  and  among  other  stu 
dents,  where  each  mind  responds  not  to  the  teacher's 
alone  but  to  those  of  its  fellow-pupils. 

Here  are  two  irreconcilable  requirements.  In  our 
modern  systems  of  education  we  are  trying  to  respond 
to  them  as  best  we  may,  teaching  in  class  and  at  the 
same  time  giving  each  pupil  as  much  personal  atten 
tion  as  we  can.  The  tutorial  system,  now  employed 
in  Princeton  University,  is  an  interesting  example  of 
our  efforts  as  applied  to  the  higher  education. 

At  the  same  time,  eclecticism  in  our  choice  of  sub 
jects  is  very  manifest,  and  at  times  our  success  here 
seems  as  doubtful  as  our  mixture  of  architectural 
styles.  In  the  old  college  days,  not  so  very  long  ago, 
Latin,  Greek,  and  mathematics  made  up  the  curri 
culum.  Now  our  boys  choose  from  a  thousand  sub 
jects  grouped  in  a  hundred  courses.  In  our  common 
schools  we  have  introduced  so  many  new  subjects  as 
to  crowd  the  curriculum.  Signs  of  a  reaction  are 
evident.  I  am  alluding  to  the  matter  here  only  as  an 
other  example  of  our  modern  passion  for  wide  selec 
tion  and  for  the  combination  of  things  that  ap 
parently  defy  amalgamation. 

What  of  religion?  Prof.  George  E.  Woodberry,  in 
his  interesting  book  on  North  Africa,  says  in  sub 
stance  that  there  are  only  two  kinds  of  religion,  the 
simple  and  the  complex.  Mohammedanism  he  con 
siders  a  simple  religion,  like  New  England  Puritan 
ism,  with  which  he  thinks  it  has  points  in  common. 


220  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Both  are  very  different  from  Buddhism,  for  instance. 
Accepting  for  the  moment  his  classification  I  believe 
that  the  facts  show  an  effort  to  combine  the  two  types 
in  the  United  States.  Many  of  the  Christian  denom 
inations  that  Woodberry  would  class  as  "simple"- 
those  that  began  with  a  total  absence  of  ritual,  are 
becoming  ritualized.  Creeds  once  simple  are  becom 
ing  complicated  with  interpretation  and  comment. 
On  the  other  hand  we  may  see  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  and  among  the  so-called  "High  Church''  Epis 
copalians  a  disposition  to  adopt  some  of  the  methods 
that  have  hitherto  distinguished  other  religious  bod 
ies.  Consider,  for  example,  some  of  the  religious  meet 
ings  held  by  the  Paulist  Fathers  in  New  York,  char 
acterized  by  popular  addresses  and  the  singing  of 
simple  hymns.  As  another  example  of  the  eclectic 
spirit  of  churches  in  America  we  may  point  to  the 
various  efforts  at  combination  or  unity,  with  such  re 
sults  as  the  Federation  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in 
America— an  ambitious  name,  not  yet  justified  by  the 
facts — the  proposed  amalgamation  of  several  of  the 
most  powerful  Protestant  bodies  in  Canada,  and  the 
accomplished  fact  of  the  University  of  Toronto — an 
institution  whose  constituent  colleges  are  controlled 
by  different  religious  denominations,  including  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  I  may  also  mention  the  pres 
ent  organization  of  the  New  York  Public  Library, 
many  of  whose  branch  libraries  were  contributions 
from  religious  denominations,  including  the  Jews, 
the  Catholics  ^and  the  Episcopalians.  All  these  now 
work  together  harmoniously.  I  know  of  nothing  of 
this  kind  on  any  other  continent,  and  I  think  we  shall 
be  justified  in  crediting  it  to  the  present  American 
tendency  to  eclecticism. 

Turn  for  a  moment  to  philosophy.     What  is  the 
philosophical  system  most  widely  known  at  present 


AMERICAN    THOUGHT  221 

as  American?  Doubtless  the  pragmatism  of  William 
James.  No  one  ever  agreed  with  anyone  else  in  a 
statement  regarding  philosophy,  and  I  do  not  expect 
you  to  agree  with  me  in  this;  but  pragmatism  seems 
to  me  essentially  an  eclectic  system.  It  is  based  on 
the  character  of  results.  Is  something  true  or  false? 
I  will  tell  you  when  I  find  out  whether  it  works  prac 
tically  or  not.  Is  something  right  or  wrong?  I  rely 
on  the  same  test.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  this  is  the 
scheme  of  the  peasant  in  later  Rome,  who  was  per 
fectly  willing  to  appeal  to  Roman  Juno  or  Egyptian 
Isis  or  Phoenician  Moloch,  so  long  as  he  got  what  he 
wanted.  If  a  little  bit  of  Schopenhauer  works,  and 
some  of  Fichte;  a  piece  of  Christianity  and  a  part  of 
Vedantism,  it  is  all  grist  to  the  mill  of  pragmatism. 
Any  of  it  that  works  must  of  necessity  be  right  and 
true.  I  am  not  criticizing  this,  or  trying  to  contro 
vert  it;  I  am  merely  asserting  that  it  leads  to  eclec 
ticism;  and  this,  I  believe,  explains  its  vogue  in  the 
United  States. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  give,  in  the  compass  of 
a  brief  address,  a  list  of  all  the  domains  in  which  this 
eclecticism — this  tendency  to  select,  combine  and 
blend — has  cropped  out  among  us  Americans  of  to 
day.  I  have  reserved  for  the  last  that  in  which  we  are 
particularly  interested — the  Public  Library,  in  which 
we  may  see  it  exemplified  in  an  eminent  degree.  The 
public  library  in  America  has  blossomed  out  into  a 
different  thing,  a  wider  thing,  a  combination  of  more 
different  kinds  of  things,  than  in  any  other  part  of  the 
world.  Foreign  librarians  and  foreign  library  users 
look  at  us  askance.  They  wonder  at  the  things  we  are 
trying  to  combine  under  the  activities  of  one  public 
institution;  they  shudder  at  our  extravagance.  They 
wonder  that  our  tax-payers  do  not  rebel  when  they  are 
compelled  to  foot  the  bills  for  what  Ave  do.  But  the 


222  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

taxpayers  do  not  seem  to  mind.  They  frequently 
complain,  but  not  about  what  we  are  doing.  What 
bothers  them  is  that  we  do  not  try  to  do  more.  When 
we  began  timidly  to  add  branch  libraries  to  our  sys 
tem  they  asked  us  why  we  did  not  build  and  equip 
them  faster;  when  we  placed  a  few  books  on  open 
shelves  they  demanded  that  we  treat  our  whole  stock 
in  the  same  way;  when  we  set  aside  a  corner  for  the 
children  they  forced  us  to  fit  up  a  whole  room  and  to 
place  such  a  room  in  every  building,  large  or  small. 
We  have  responded  to  every  such  demand.  Each  re 
sponse  has  cost  money  and  the  public  has  paid  the 
bill.  Apparently  librarians  and  public  are  equally 
satisfied.  We  should  not  be  astonished,  for  this 
merely  shows  that  the  library  is  subject  to  the  same 
laws  and  tendencies  as  all  other  things  American. 

Hence  it  comes  about  that  whereas  in  a  large  li 
brary  a  century  ago  there  were  simply  stored  books 
with  no  appliances  to  do  anything  but  keep  them  safe, 
wre  now  find  in  library  buildings  all  sorts  of  devices  to 
facilitate  the  quick  and  efficient  use  of  the  books  both 
in  the  building  and  in  the  readers'  homes,  together 
with  other  devices  to  stimulate  a  desire  to  use  books 
among  those  who  have  not  yet  felt  it;  to  train  chil 
dren  to  use  and  love  books;  to  interest  the  public  in 
things  that  will  lead  to  the  use  of  books.  This  means 
that  many  of  the  things  in  a  modern  library  seem  to 
an  old-fashioned  librarian  and  an  old-fashioned 
reader  like  unwarranted  extensions  or  even  usurpa 
tions.  In  our  own  Central  building  you  will  find  col 
lections  of  postal  cards  and  specimens  of  textile 
fabrics,  an  index  to  current  lectures,  exhibitions  and 
concerts,  a  public  writing-room,  with  free  note-paper 
and  envelopes,  a  class  of  young  women  studying  to 
be  librarians,  meeting  places  for  all  sorts  of  clubs  and 
groups,  civic,  educational,  social,  political  and  re- 


AMERICAN    THOUGHT  223 

ligious;  a  bindery  in  full  operation,  a  photographic 
copying-machine;  lunch-rooms  and  rest-rooms  for  the 
staff;  a  garage,  with  an  automobile  in  it,  a  telephone 
switchboard,  a  paintshop,  a  carpenter-shop,  and  a 
power-plant  of  considerable  capacity.  Not  one  of 
these  things  I  believe,  would  you  have  found  in  a  large 
library  fifty  years  ago.  And  yet  the  citizens  of  St. 
Louis  seem  to  be  cheerful  and  are  not  worrying  over 
the  future.  We  are  eclectic,  but  we  are  choosing  the 
elements  of  our  blend  with  some  discretion  and  we 
have  been  able,  so  far,  to  relate  them  all  to  books,  to 
the  mental  activities  that  are  stimulated  by  books 
and  that  produce  more  books,  to  the  training  that  in 
stils  into  the  rising  generation  a  love  for  books.  The 
book  is  still  at  the  foundation  of  the  library,  even  if 
its  walls  have  received  some  architectural  embellish 
ment  of  a  different  type. 

When  anyone  objects  to  the  introduction  into  the 
library  of  what  the  colleges  call  "extra-curriculum 
activities,"  I  prefer  to  explain  and  justify  it  in  this 
larger  way,  rather  than  to  take  up  each  activity  by 
itself  and  discuss  its  reasonableness — though  this 
also  may  be  undertaken  with  the  hope  of  success.  In 
developing  as  it  has  done,  the  Library  in  the  United 
States  of  America  has  not  been  simply  obeying  some 
law  of  its  own  being;  it  has  been  following  the 
whole  stream  of  American  development.  You 
can  call  it  a  drift  if  you  like;  but  the  Library  has 
not  been  simply  drifting.  The  swimmer  in  a  rapid 
stream  may  give  up  all  effort  and  submit  to  be  borne 
along  by  the  current,  or  he  may  try  to  get  somewhere. 
In  so  doing,  he  may  battle  with  the  current  and 
achieve  nothing  but  fatigue,  or  he  may  use  the  force 
of  the  stream,  as  far  as  he  may,  to  reach  his  own  goal. 
I  like  to  think  that  this  is  what  many  American  in 
stitutions  are  doing,  our  libraries  among  them.  They 


224  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

are  using  the  present  tendency  to  eclecticism  in  an 
effort  toward  wider  public  service.  When,  in  a  com 
munity,  there  seems  to  be  a  need  for  doing  some  par 
ticular  thing,  the  library,  if  it  has  the  equipment  and 
the  means,  is  doing  that  thing  without  inquiring  too 
closely  whether  there  is  logical  justification  for  link 
ing  it  with  the  library's  activities  rather  than  with 
some  others.  Note,  now,  how  this  desirable  result  is 
aided  by  our  prevailing  American  tendency  toward 
eclecticism.  Suppose  precisely  the  same  conditions 
to  obtain  in  England,  or  France,  or  Italy,  the  ad 
mitted  need  for  some  activity,  the  ability  of  the  li 
brary  and  the  inability  of  any  other  institution,  to 
undertake  it.  I  submit  that  the  library  would  be  ex 
tremely  unlikely  to  move  in  the  matter,  simply  from 
the  lack  of  the  tendency  that  we  are  discussing.  That 
tendency  gives  a  flexibility,  almost  a  fluidity,  which 
under  a  pressure  of  this  kind,  yields  and  ensures  an 
outlet  for  desirable  energy  along  a  line  of  least  re 
sistance. 

The  Englishman  and  the  American,  when  they  are 
arguing  a  case  of  this  kind,  assume  each  the  condition 
of  affairs  that  obtains  in  his  own  land — the  rigidity 
on  the  one  hand,  the  fluidity  on  the  other.  They  as 
sume  it  without  stating  it  or  even  thoroughly  under 
standing  it,  and  the  result  is  that  neither  can  under 
stand  the  conclusions  of  the  other.  The  fact  is  that 
they  are  both  right.  I  seriously  question  whether  it 
would  be  right  or  proper  for  a  library  in  a  British 
community  to  do  many  of  the  things  that  libraries  are 
doing  in  American  communities.  I  may  go  further 
and  say  that  the  rigidity  of  British  social  life  would 
make  it  impossible  for  the  library  to  achieve  these 
things.  But  it  is  also  true  that  the  fluidity  of  Amer 
ican  social  life  makes  it  equally  impossible  for  the 
library  to  withstand  the  pressure  that  is  brought  to 


AMERICAN    THOUGHT  225 

bear  on  it  here.  To  yield  is  in  its  case  right  and 
proper  and  a  failure  of  response  would  be  wrong  and 
improper. 

It  is  usually  assumed  by  the  British  critic  of 
American  libraries  that  their  peculiarities  are  due  to 
the  temperament  of  the  American  librarian.  We 
make  a  similar  assumption  when  we  discuss  British 
libraries.  I  do  not  deny  that  the  librarians  on  both 
sides  have  had  something  to  do  with  it,  but  the  de 
termining  factor  has  been  the  social  and  tempera 
mental  differences  between  the  two  peoples.  Amer 
icans  are  fluid,  experimental,  eclectic,  and  this  finds 
expression  in  the  character  of  their  institutions  and 
in  the  way  these  are  administered  and  used. 

Take  if  you  please  the  reaction  of  the  library  on 
the  two  sides  of  the  water  to  the  inevitable  result  of 
opening  it  to  home-circulation — the  necessity  of 
knowing  whether  a  given  book  is  or  is  not  on  the 
shelves.  The  American  response  was  to  open  the 
shelves,  the  British,  to  create  an  additional  piece  of 
machinery — the  indicator.  These  two  results  might 
have  been  predicted  in  advance  by  one  familiar  with 
the  temper  of  the  two  peoples.  It  has  shown  itself  in 
scores  of  instances,  in  the  front  yards  of  residences, 
for  instance — walled  oft0  in  England  and  open  to  the 
street  in  the  United  States. 

I  shall  be  reminded,  I  suppose,  that  there  are 
plenty  of  open  shelves  in  English  libraries  and  that 
the  open  shelf  is  gaming  in  favor.  True;  England  is 
becoming  "Americanized"  in  more  respects  than  this 
one.  But  I  am  speaking  of  the  immediate  reaction  to 
the  stimulus  of  popular  demand,  and  this  was  as  I 
have  stated  it.  In  each  case  the  reaction,  temporarily 
at  least,  satisfied  the  demand;  showing  that  the  dif 
ference  was  not  of  administrative  habit  alone,  but  of 
community  feeling. 


226  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

This  rapid  review  of  modern  American  tenden 
cies,  however  confusing  the  impression  that  it  may 
give,  will  at  any  rate  convince  us,  I  think,  of  one 
thing — the  absurdity  of  objecting  to  anything  what 
ever  on  the  ground  that  it  is  un-American.  We  are 
the  most  receptive  people  in  the  world.  We  "take  our 
good  things  where  we  find  them,"  and  what  we  take 
becomes  "American"  as  soon  as  it  gets  into  our  hands. 
And  yet,  if  anything  new  does  not  happen  to  suit  any 
of  us,  the  favorite  method  of  attack  is  to  denounce  it 
as  "un-American."  Pretty  nearly  every  element  of 
our  present  social  fabric  has  been  thus  denounced,  at 
one  time  or  another,  and  as  it  goes  on  changing,  every 
change  is  similarly  attacked. 

The  makers  of  our  Constitution  were  good  con 
servative  Americans — much  too  conservative,  some 
of  our  modern  radicals  say — yet  they  provided  for 
altering  that  Constitution,  and  set  absolutely  no  lim 
its  on  the  alterations  that  might  be  made,  provided 
that  they  were  made  in  the  manner  specified  in  the 
instrument.  We  can  make  over  our  government  into 
a  monarchy  tomorrow,  if  we  want,  or  decree  that  no 
one  in  Chicago  shall  wear  a  silk  hat  on  New  Year's 
Day.  It  was  recently  the  fashion  to  complain  that 
the  amendment  of  the  Constitution  has  become  so  dif 
ficult  as  to  be  now  practically  a  dead  letter.  And  yet 
we  have  done  so  radical  a  thing  as  to  change  abso 
lutely  the  method  of  electing  senators  of  the  United 
States;  and  we  did  it  as  easily  and  quietly  as  buying 
a  hat — vastly  more  easily  than  changing  a  cook.  The 
only  obstacle  to  changing  our  Constitution,  no  matter 
how  radically  and  fundamentally,  is  the  opposition  of 
the  people  themselves.  As  soon  as  they  want  the 
change,  it  comes  quickly  and  simply.  Changes  like 
these  are  not  un-American  if  the  American  people  like 
them  well  enough  to  make  them.  They,  and  they 


AMERICAN    THOUGHT 

alone,  are  the  judges  of  what  peculiarities  they  shall 
adopt  as  their  own  customs  and  characteristics.  So 
that  when  we  hear  that  this  or  that  is  un-American, 
we  may  agree  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  yet  an  Amer 
ican  characteristic.  That  we  do  not  care  for  it  today 
is  no  sign  that  we  may  not  take  up  with  it  tomorrow, 
and  it  is  no  legitimate  argument  against  our  doing 
so,  if  we  think  proper. 

And  now  what  does  this  all  mean?  The  pessimist 
will  tell  us,  doubtless,  that  it  is  a  sign  of  decadence. 
It  does  remind  us  a  little  of  the  later  days  of  the  Ro 
man  empire  when  the  peoples  of  the  remotest  parts  of 
the  known  world,  with  their  arts,  customs  arid  man 
ners,  were  all  to  be  found  in  the  imperial  city — when 
the  gods  of  Greece,  Syria  and  Egypt  were  worshipped 
side  by  side  with  those  of  old  Rome,  where  all  sorts  of 
exotic  art,  philosophy,  literature  and  politics  took 
root  and  flourished.  That  is  usually  regarded  as  a 
period  of  decadence,  and  it  was  certainly  a  precursor 
of  the  empire's  fall.  When  we  consider  that  it  was 
contemporaneous  with  great  material  prosperity  and 
with  the  spread  of  luxury  and  a  certain  loosening  of 
the  moral  fiber,  such  as  we  are  experiencing  in  Amer 
ica  today,  we  can  not  help  feeling  a  little  perturbed. 
Yet  there  is  another  way  of  looking  at  it.  A  period  of 
this  sort  is  often  only  a  period  of  readjustment.  The 
Roman  empire  as  a  political  entity  went  out  of  ex 
istence  long  ago,  but  Rome's  influence  on  our  art,  law, 
literature  and  government  is  still  powerful.  Her  so- 
called  "fall"  was  really  not  a  fall  but  a  changing  into 
something  else.  In  fact,  if  we  take  Bergson's  view 
point — which  it  seems  to  me  is  undoubtedly  the  true 
one,  the  thing  we  call  Rome  was  never  anything  else 
but  a  process  of  change.  At  the  time  of  which  we 
speak  the  visible  part  of  the  change  was  accelerated— 
that  is  all.  In  like  manner  each  one  of  you  as  an  in- 


228  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

dividual  is  not  a  fixed  entity.  You  are  changing 
every  instant  and  the  reality  about  you  is  the  change, 
not  what  you  see  with  the  eye  or  photograph  with  the 
camera — that  is  merely  a  stage  through  which  you 
pass  and  in  which  you  do  not  stay — not  for  the  thou 
sand  millionth  part  of  the  smallest  recognizable  in 
stant.  So  our  current  American  life  and  thought  is 
not  something  that  stands  still  long  enough  for  us  to 
describe  it.  Even  as  we  write  the  description  it  has 
changed  to  another  phase.  And  the  phenomena  of 
transition  just  now  are  particularly  noticeable — that 
is  all.  We  may  call  them  decadent  or  we  may  look 
upon  them  as  the  beginnings  of  a  new  and  more  glori 
ous  national  life. 

"The  size  and  intricacy  which  we  have  to  deal 
with,"  says  Walter  Lippmann,  ahave  done  more  than 
anything  else,  I  imagine,  to  wreck  the  simple  general 
izations  of  our  ancestors." 

This  is  quite  true,  and  so,  in  place  of  simplicity 
we  are  introducing  complexity,  very  largely  by  selec 
tion  and  combination  of  simple  elements  evolved  in 
former  times  to  fit  earlier  conditions.  Whether  or 
ganic  relations  can  be  established  among  these  ele 
ments,  so  that  there  shall  one  day  issue  from  the 
welter  something  well-rounded,  something  American, 
fitting  American  conditions  and  leading  American 
aspirations  forward  and  upward,  is  yet  on  the  knees 
of  the  gods.  We,  the  men  and  women  of  America, 
and  may  I  not  say,  we,  the  Librarians  of  America,  can 
do  much  to  direct  the  issue. 


DRUGS  AND  THE  MAN* 

The  graduation  of  a  class  of  technically  trained 
persons  is  an  event  of  special  moment.  When  \ve 
send  forth  graduates  from  our  schools  and  colleges 
devoted  to  general  education,  while  the  thought  of 
failure  may  be  disquieting  or  embarrassing,  we  know 
that  no  special  danger  can  result,  except  to  the  man 
who  has  failed.  The  college  graduate  who  has  neg 
lected  his  opportunities  has  thrown  away  a  chance, 
but  he  is  no  menace  to  his  fellows.  Affairs  take  on  a 
different  complexion  in  the  technical  or  professional 
school.  The  poorly  trained  engineer,  physician  or 
lawyer,  is  an  injury  to  the  community.  Failure  to 
train  an  engineer  may  involve  the  future  failure  of  a 
structure,  with  the  loss  of  many  lives.  Failure  to 
train  a  doctor  means  that  we  turn  loose  on  the  public 
one  who  will  kill  oftener  than  he  will  cure.  Failure 
to  train  a  lawyer  means  wills  that  can  be  broken,  con 
tracts  that  will  not  hold,  needless  litigation. 

Congressman  Kent,  of  California,  has  coined  a 
satisfactory  word  for  this  sort  of  thing — he  calls  it 
"mal-employment."  Unemployment  is  a  bad  thing. 
We  have  seen  plenty  of  it  here  during  the  past  winter. 
But  Kent  says,  and  he  is  right,  that  malemployment 
is  a  worse  thing.  All  these  poor  engineers  and  doc 
tors  and  lawyers  are  busily  engaged,  and  every  thing 
on  the  surface  seems  to  be  going  on  well.  But  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  world  would  be  better  off  if  each 
one  of  them  should  stop  working  and  never  do  an 
other  stroke.  It  would  pay  the  community  to  support 
them  in  idleness. 

*  A  Commencement  address  to  the  graduating  class  of  the  School  of 
Pharmacy,  St.  Louis,  May  19,  1915. 


230  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

I  have  always  considered  pharmacy  to  be  oiie  of 
the  occupations  in  which  nialemployment  is  particu 
larly  objectionable.  If  you  read  Homer  badly  it 
affects  no  one  but  yourself.  If  you  think  Vera  Cruz 
is  in  Italy  and  that  the  Amazon  River  runs  into  the 
Arctic  Ocean,  your  neighbor  is  as  well  off  as  before; 
but  if  you  are  under  the  impression  that  strychnine 
is  aspirin,  you  have  failed  in  a  way  that  is  more  than 
personal. 

I  am  dwelling  on  these  unpleasant  possibilities 
partly  for  the  reason  that  the  Egyptians  displayed  a 
skeleton  at  their  banquets — because  warnings  are  a 
tonic  to  the  soul — but  also  because,  if  we  are  to  credit 
much  that  wre  see  in  general  literature,  including 
especially  the  daily  paper  and  the  popular  magazine, 
all  druggists  are  malemployed.  And  if  it  would 
really  be  better  for  the  community  that  you  should 
not  enter  upon  the  profession  for  wrhich  you  have 
been  trained,  nowr,  of  course,  is  the  time  for  you  to 
know  it. 

There  seems  to  be  a  widespread  impression — an 
assumption — that  the  day  of  the  drug  is  over — that 
the  therapeutics  of  the  future  are  to  be  concerned 
alone  with  hygiene  and  sanitation,  with  physical  exer 
cise,  diet,  and  mechanical  operations.  The  very  word 
"drug"  has  come  to  have  an  objectionable  connection 
that  did  not  belong  to  it  fifty  years  ago.  Even  some 
of  the  druggists  themselves,  it  seems  to  me,  are  a  lit 
tle  ashamed  of  the  drug  part  of  their  occupation. 
Their  places  of  business  appear  to  be  news-agencies, 
refreshment  parlors,  stationery  stores — the  drugs  are 
"on  the  side,"  or  rather  in  the  rear.  Sometimes,  I  am 
told,  the  proprietors  of  these  places  know  nothing  at 
all  about  pharmacy,  but  employ  a  prescription  clerk 
who  is  a  capable  pharmacist.  Here  the  druggist  has 
stepped  down  from  his  former  position  as  the  man- 


DKUGS    AND    THE    MAN  231 

ager  of  a  business  and  has  become  a  servant.  All  of 
which  looks  to  me  as  if  the  pharmacist  himself  might 
be  beginning  to  accept  the  valuation  that  some  people 
are  putting  upon  his  services  to  the  community. 

Now  these  things  affect  me,  not  as  a  physician  nor 
as  a  pharmacist,  for  I  am  neither,  but  they  do  touch 
me  as  a  student  of  physics  and  chemistry  and  as  one 
whose  business  and  pleasure  it  has  been  for  many 
years  to  watch  the  development  of  these  and  other 
sciences.  The  fact  that  I  am  addressing  you  this 
evening  may  be  taken,  I  suppose,  as  evidence  that  you 
may  be  interested  in  this  point  of  view.  The  action 
of  most  substances  on  the  human  organism  is  a  func 
tion  of  their  chemical  constitution.  Has  that  chem 
ical  constitution  changed?  It  is  one  of  the  most 
astonishing  discoveries  of  our  age  that  many,  perhaps 
all,  substances  undergo  spontaneous  disintegration, 
giving  rise  to  the  phenomena  now  well  known  as 
"radio-activity."  No  substances  ordinarily  known 
and  used  in  pharmacy,  however,  possess  this  quality 
in  measurable  degree,  and  we  have  no  reason  to  sup 
pose  that  the  alkaloids,  for  instance,  or  the  salts  of 
potash  or  iron,  differ  today  in  any  respect  from  those 
of  a  century  ago.  How  about  the  other  factor  in  the 
reaction — the  human  organism  and  its  properties? 
That  our  bodily  properties  have  changed  in  the  past 
admits  of  no  doubt,  We  have  developed  up  to  the 
point  where  we  are  at  present.  Here,  however,  evolu 
tion  seems  to  have  left  us,  and  it  is  now  devoting  its 
attention  exclusively  to  our  mental  and  moral  prog 
ress.  Judging  from  what  is  now  going  on  upon  the 
continent  of  Europe,  much  remains  to  be  accom 
plished.  But  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  if 
Cresar  or  Hannibal  had  taken  a  dose  of  opium,  or 
ipecac,  or  aspirin,  the  effect  would  have  been  different 
from  that  experienced  today  by  one  of  you.  This  is 


232  LIBKAKIANVS    OPEN    SHELF 

what  a  physicist  or  a  chemist  would  expect.  If  the 
action  of  a  drug  on  the  organism  is  chemical,  and  if 
neither  the  drug  nor  the  organism  has  changed,  the 
action  must  be  the  same.  If  we  still  desire  to  bring 
about  the  action  and  if  there  is  no  better  way  to  do  it, 
we  must  use  the  drug,  and  there  is  still  need  for  the 
druggist.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  number  of  drugs 
at  your  disposal  today  is  vastly  greater  than  ever  be 
fore,  largely  owing  to  the  labor,  and  the  ingenuity,  of 
the  analytical  chemist.  And  there  are  still  great 
classes  of  compounds  of  whose  existence  the  chemist 
is  assured,  but  which  he  has  not  even  had  time  to 
form,  much  less  to  investigate.  Among  these  may 
lurk  remedies  more  valuable  than  any  at  our  disposal 
today.  It  does  not  look,  at  any  rate,  as  if  the  drug 
gist  were  going  to  be  driven  out  of  business  from  lack 
of  stock,  whether  we  regard  quantity  or  variety.  To 
what,  then,  must  we  attribute  the  growth  of  the  feel 
ing  that  the  treatment  of  disease  by  the  administra 
tion  of  drugs  is  on  the  decline?  From  the  standpoint 
of  a  layman  it  seems  to  be  due  to  two  facts,  or  at  least, 
to  have  been  strongly  affected  by  them:  (1)  The  dis 
covery  and  rapid  development  of  other  therapeutic 
measures,  such  as  those  dependent  on  surgical  meth 
ods,  or  on  the  use  of  immunizing  serums,  or  on  manip 
ulations  such  as  massage,  or  on  diet,  or  even  on  men 
tal  suggestion;  and  (2)  the  very  increase  in  the 
number  and  variety  of  available  drugs  alluded  to 
above,  which  has  introduced  to  the  public  many  new 
and  only  partially  tried  substances,  the  results  of 
whose  use  has  often  been  unexpectedly  injurious,  in 
cluding  a  considerable  number  of  new  habit-forming 
drugs  whose  ravages  are  becoming  known  to  the  pub 
lic. 

The  development  of  therapeutic  measures  that  are 
independent  of  drills  has  been  coincident  with  popu- 


DKUGS    AND    THE    MAN  233 

lar  emancipation  from  the  mere  superstition  of  drug- 
administration.    The  older  lists  of  approved  remedies 
were  loaded  with  items  that  had  no  curative  proper 
ties  at  all,  except  by  suggestion.     They  were  purely 
magical — the  thumb-nails  of  executed  criminals,  the 
hair  of  black  cats,  the  ashes  of  burned  toads  and  so 
on.     Even  at  this  moment  your  pharmacopoeia  con 
tains  scores  of  remedies  that  are  without  effect  or 
that  do  not  produce  the  effects  credited  to  them.     I 
am  relying  on  high  therapeutical  authority  for  this 
statement.     Now  when  the  sick  man  is  told  by  his 
own  physician  to  discard  angleworm  poultices,  and 
herbs  plucked  in  the  dark  of  the  moon,  on  which  he 
had  formerly  relied,  it  is  any  wonder  that    he    has 
ended  by  being  suspicious  also  of  calomel  and  ipecac, 
with  which  they  were  formerly  classed?     And  when 
the  man  who  believed  that  he  received  benefit  from 
some  of  these  magical  remedies  is  told  that  the  result 
was  due  to  auto-suggestion,  is  it  remarkable  that  he 
should  fall  an  easy  prey  next  day  to  the    Christian 
Scientist  who  tells  him  that  the  effects  of  calomel  and 
ipecac  are  due  to  nothing  else  than  this  same  sugges 
tion?      The  increased  use  and  undoubted  value    of 
special  diets,  serums,  aseptic  surgery,  baths,  massage, 
electrical  treatment,  radio-therapeutics,   and  so   on, 
makes  it  easy  for  him  to  discard  drugs  altogether, 
and  further,  it  creates,  even  among  those  who  con 
tinue  to  use  drugs,  an  atmosphere  favorable   to  the 
belief  that  they  are  back  numbers,  on  the  road  to  dis 
use.     Just  here  comes  in  the  second  factor  to  per 
suade  the  layman,  from  what  has  come  under  his  own 
observation,  that  drugs  are  injurious,  dangerous,  even 
fatal.     Newly  discovered  chemical  compounds  with 
valuable  properties,  have  been  adopted  and  used  in 
medicine  before  the  necessary  time  had  elapsed  to  dis 
close  the  fact  that  they  possessed  also  other  proper- 


234  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

ties,  more  elusive  than  the  first,  but  at  potent  for 
harm  as  these  were  for  good.  Many  were  narcotics  or 
valuable  anesthetics,  local  or  otherwise,  which  have 
proved  to  be  the  creators  of  habits  more  terrible  than 
the  age-long  enemies  of  mankind,  alcohol  and  opium. 
When  the  man  whose  wife  takes  a  coal-tar  derivative 
for  headache  finds  that  it  stills  her  heart  forever,  the 
incident  affects  his  whole  opinion  of  drugs.  When  the 
patient  for  whom  one  of  the  new  drugs  has  been  pre 
scribed  by  a  practitioner  without  knowledge  of  his 
idiosyncrasies  reacts  to  it  fatally,  it  is  slight  consola 
tion  to  his  survivors  that  his  case  is  described  in  print 
under  the  heading,  "A  Curious  Case  of  Umptiol  Poi 
soning."  When  a  mother  sees  her  son  go  to  the  bad  by 
taking  cocaine,  or  heroin,  or  some  other  drug  of  whose 
existence  she  was  ignorant  a  dozen  years  ago,  she  may 
be  pardoned  for  believing  that  all  drugs,  or  at  least 
all  newly  discovered  drugs,  are  tools  of  the  devil. 

And  this  feeling  is  intensified  by  one  of  our  na 
tional  faults — the  tendency  to  jump  at  conclusions,  to 
overdo  tilings,  to  run  from  one  evil  to  its'  opposite, 
without  stopping  at  the  harmless  mean.  WTe  think 
we  are  brighter  and  quicker  than  the  Englishman  or 
the  German.  They  think  we  are  more  superficial. 
Whatever  name  you  give  the  quality  it  causes  us  to 
"catch  on"  sooner,  to  work  a  good  thing  to  death  more 
thoroughly  and  to  drop  it  more  quickly  for  something 
else,  than  any  other  known  people,  ancient  or  mod 
ern.  Somebody  devises  a  new  form  of  skate  roller 
that  makes  roller-skating  a  good  sport.  We  find  it 
out  before  anyone  else  and  in  a  few  months  the  land 
is  plastered  from  Maine  to  California  with  huge  skat 
ing  halls  or  sheds.  Everybody  is  skating  at  once  and 
the  roar  of  the  rollers  resounds  across  the  oceans.  We 
skate  ourselves  out  in  a  year  or  two,  and  then  the  roar 
ceases,  the  sheds  decay  and  roller-skating  is  once 


DRUGS    AND    THE    MAN  235 

more  a  normal  amusement.  Then  someone  invents 
the  safety  bicycle,  and  in  a  trice  all  America,  man, 
woman  and  child,  is  awheel.  And  we  run  this  good 
horse  to  death,  and  throw  his  body  aside  in  our  haste 
to  discover  something  new.  Shortly  afterward  some 
one  invents  a  new  dance,  or  imports  it  from  Spanish 
America,  and  there  is  hardly  time  to  snap  one's  finger 
before  we  are  all  dancing,  grandparents  and  children, 
the  cook  in  the  kitchen  and  the  street-cleaner  on  the 
boulevard. 

We  display  as  little  moderation  in  our  therapeut 
ics.  We  can  not  get  over  the  idea  that  a  remedy  of 
proved  value  in  a  particular  case  may  be  good  for  all 
others.  Our  proprietary  medicines  will  cure  every 
thing  from  tuberculosis  to  cancer.  If  massage  has 
relieved  rheumatism,  why  should  it  not  be  good  also 
for  typhoid?  The  Tumtum  Springs  did  my  uncle's 
gout  so  much  good;  why  doesn't  your  cousin  try  them 
for  her  headaches?  And  even  so,  drugs  must  be  all 
good  or  bad.  Many  of  us  remember  the  old  house 
hold  remedies,  tonics  or  laxatives  or  what  not,  with 
which  the  children  were  all  dosed  at  intervals, 
whether  they  were  ill  or  not.  That  was  in  the  days 
when  all  drugs  were  good:  when  one  "took  some 
thing"  internally  for  everything  that  happened  to 
him.  Xow  the  pendulum  has  swung  to  the  other  side 
—that  is  all.  If  we  can  ever  settle  down  to  the  ra 
tional  way  of  regarding  these  tilings,  we  shall  dis 
cover,  what  sensible  medical  men  have  always  known, 
and  what  druggists  as  well  as  mere  laymen  can  not 
afford  to  neglect,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  pan 
acea,  and  that  all  rational  therapeutics  is  based  on 
common  sense  study  of  the  disease — finding  out  what 
is  the  cause  and  endeavoring  to  abate  that  cause.  The 
cause  may  be  such  that  surgery  is  indicated,  or  serum, 
or  regulation  of  diet,  or  change  of  scene.  It  may  ob- 


236  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

viously  indicate  the  administration  of  a  drug.  I  once 
heard  a  clever  lawyer  in  a  poisoning  case,  in  an  en 
deavor  to  discredit  a  physician,  whom  we  shall  call 
Dr.  Jones,  tell  the  following  anecdote:  (Dr.  Jones, 
who  had  been  called  in  when  the  victim  was  about  to 
expire,  had  recommended  the  application  of  ice). 
Said  the  lawyer : 

"A  workman  was  tamping  a  charge  of  blasting- 
powder  with  a  crowbar,  when  the  charge  went  off  pre 
maturely  and  the  bar  was  driven  through  the  un 
fortunate  man's  body,  so  that  part  of  it  protruded  on 
either  side.  A  local  physician  was  summoned,  and 
after  some  study  he  pronounced  as  follows :  'Now,  if 
I  let  that  bar  stay  there,  you'll  die.  If  I  pull  it  out, 
you'll  die.  But  I'll  give  you  a  pill  that  may  melt  it 
where  it  is !'  In  this  emergency,"  the  lawyer  went  on 
to  say,  "Dr.  Jones  doubtless  would  have  prescribed 
ice" 

Now  the  pill  to  melt  the  crowbar  may  stand  for 
our  former  excessive  and  absurd  regard  for  drugs. 
The  application  of  ice  in  the  same  emergency  may 
likewise  represent  a  universal  resort  to  hydrotberapy. 
Neither  of  them  is  logical.  There  is  place  for  each, 
but  there  are  emergencies  that  can  not  be  met  with 
either.  Still,  to  abandon  one  method  of  treatment 
simply  because  additional  methods  have  proved  to  be 
valuable,  would  be  as  absurd  as  to  give  up  talking  up 
on  the  invention  of  writing  or  to  prohibit  the  raising 
of  corn  on  land  that  will  produce  wheat. 

No :  we  shall  doubtless  continue  to  use  drugs  and 
we  shall  continue  to  need  the  druggist.  What  can  he 
do  to  make  his  business  more  valued  and  respected, 
more  useful  to  the  public  and  more  profitable  to  him 
self?  For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  will  finally 
succeed  in  attaining  all  these  desirable  results  to 
gether,  or  fail  in  all.  Here  and  there  we  may  find  a 


DRUGS    AND    THE    MAN  237 

man  who  is  making  a  fortune  out  of  public  credulity 
and  ignorance,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  one  who  is  giv 
ing  the  public  more  service  than  it  pays  for  and  ruin 
ing  himself  in  the  process;  but  in  general  and  on  the 
average  personal  and  public  interest  run  pretty  well 
hand  in  hand.  Henry  Ford  makes  his  millions  be 
cause  he  is  producing  something  that  the  people  want. 
St.  Jacob's  Oil,  once  the  most  widely  advertised 
nostrum  on  the  continent,  cost  its  promoters  a  for 
tune  because  there  was  nothing  in  it  that  one  might 
not  find  in  some  other  oil  or  grease. 

What  then,  I  repeat,  must  the  pharmacist  do  to 
succeed,  personally  and  professionally?  I  welcome 
this  opportunity  to  tell  you  what  I  think.  My  advice 
comes  from  the  outside — often  the  most  valuable 
source.  I  have  so  little  to  do  with  pharmacy,  either 
as  a  profession  or  as  a  business  that  I  stand  far 
enough  away  to  get  a  bird's-eye  view.  And  if  you 
think  that  any  advice,  based  on  this  view,  is  worth 
less,  it  will  be  a  consolation  to  all  of  us  to  realize  that 
no  force  on  earth  can  compel  you  to  take  it. 

It  is  doubtless  too  late  to  lament  or  try  to  resist 
the  course  of  business  that  has  gone  far  to  turn  the 
pharmacy  into  a  department  store.  But  let  me  urge 
you  not  to  let  this  tendency  run  wild.  There  are  side 
lines  that  belong  properly  to  pharmacy,  such  as  all 
those  pertaining  to  hygiene  or  sanitation;  to  the 
toilet,  to  bodily  refreshment.  I  do  not  see  why  one 
should  not  expect  to  find  at  his  pharmacist's,  soap,  or 
tooth-brushes,  or  sponges.  I  do  not  see  why  the 
thirsty  man  should  not  go  there  for  mineral  water  as 
well  as  the  dyspeptic  for  pills.  But  I  fail  to  see  the 
connection  between  pharmacy  and  magazines,  or  sta 
tionery  or  candy.  By  selling  these  the  druggist  puts 
himself  at  once  into  competition  with  the  department 
stores.  There  can  be  no  doubt  about  who  will  win  out 


238  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

in  any  such  competition  as  that.  But  I  believe  there 
is  still  a  place  in  the  community  for  any  special  line 
of  business  if  its  proprietor  sticks  to  his  specialty  and 
makes  himself  a  recognized  expert  in  it.  The  depart 
ment  store  spreads  itself  too  thin — there  is  no  room 
for  intensive  development  at  any  point  of  its  vast  ex 
panse.  Its  general  success  is  due  to  this  very  fact.  I 
am  not  now  speaking  of  the  rural  community  where 
there  is  room  only  for  one  general  store  selling  every 
thing  that  the  community  needs.  But  iny  statement 
holds  good  for  the  city  and  the  large  town. 

Let  me  illustrate  by  an  instance  in  which  we  li 
brarians  are  professionally  interested — the  book 
store.  Once  every  town  had  its  book-store.  Now  they 
are  rare.  We  have  few  such  stores  even  in  a  city  of 
the  size  of  St.  Louis.  Every  department  store  has  its 
book-section.  They  are  rarely  satisfactory.  Every 
body  is  lamenting  the  disappearance  of  the  old  book 
store,  with  its  old  scholarly  proprietor  who  knew 
books  and  the  book-market;  who  loved  books  and  the 
book-business.  Quarts  of  ink  have  been  wasted  in 
trying  to  account  for  his  disappearance.  The  Public 
Library,  for  one  thing,  has  been  blamed  for  it.  I  have 
no  time  now  to  disprove  this,  though  it  is  very  clear 
to  me  that  libraries  help  the  book  trade  instead  of 
hindering  it.  I  shall  simply  give  you  my  version  of 
the  trouble.  The  book-dealer  disappeared,  as  soon  as 
he  entered  into  competition  with  the  department 
store.  He  put  in  side  lines  of  toys,  and  art  supplies, 
and  cameras  and  candy.  He  began  to  spread  himself 
thin  and  had  no  time  for  expert  concentration  on  his 
one  specialty.  Thus  he  lost  his  one  advantage  over 
the  department  store — his  strength  in  the  region 
where  it  was  weak ;  and  of  course  he  succumbed.  If 
you  will  think  for  a  moment  of  the  special  businesses 
that  have  survived  the  competition  of  the  department 


DKUGfc    AND    THE    MAN  239 

store,  you  will  see  that  they  are  precisely  the  ones 
that  have  resisted  this  temptation  to  spread  them 
selves  and  have  been  content  to  remain  experts.  Look 
at  the  men's  furnishing  stores.  Would  they  have  sur 
vived  if  they  had  begun  to  sell  cigars  and  lawn-mow 
ers?  Look  at  the  retail  shoe  stores,  the  opticians,  the 
cigar  stores,  the  bakers,  the  meat  markets,  the  confec 
tioners,  the  restaurants  of  all  grades !  They  have  all 
to  compete  with  the  department  stores,  but  their  cus 
tomers  realize  that  they  have  something  to  offer  that 
can  be  offered  by  no  department  store — expert  service 
in  one  line,  due  to  some  one's  life-long  training,  ex 
perience  and  devotion  to  the  public. 

I  do  not  want  the  pharmacist  to  go  the  way  of  the 
book  dealers.  Already  some  of  the  department 
stores  include  drug  departments.  I  do  not  see  how 
these  can  be  as  good  as  independent  pharmacies.  But 
I  do  not  see  the  essential  difference  between  a  drug 
department  in  a  store  that  sells  also  cigars  and  sta 
tionery  and  confectionery,  and  a  so-called  independ 
ent  pharmacy  that  also  distributes  these  very  things. 

I  am  assuming  that  the  druggist  is  an  expert. 
That  is  the  object  of  our  colleges  of  pharmacy,  as  I 
understand  the  matter.  As  a  librarian  I  want  to  deal 
with  a  book  man  who  knows  more  of  the  book  busi 
ness  than  I  do.  I  want  to  ask  his  advice  and  be  able 
to  rely  on  it.  When  I  have  printing  to  be  done,  I  like 
to  give  it  to  a  man  who  knows  more  about  the  printed 
page  than  I  do.  When  I  buy  bread,  or  shoes,  or  a 
house,  or  a  farm  I  like  to  deal  with  recognized  ex 
perts  in  these  articles.  How  much  more  when  I  am 
purchasing  substances  where  expert  knowledge  will 
turn  the  balance  between  life  and  death.  I  have  gos 
siped  with  pharmacists  enough  to  know  that  all  phy 
sicians  do  not  avoid  incompatible^  in  their  prescrip 
tions,  and  that  occasionallv  a  combination  falls  into 


240  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

the  prescription  clerk's  hands,  which,  if  made  up  as 
he  reads  it  would  produce  a  poisonous  compound,  or 
perhaps  even  an  explosive  mixture.  Two  heads  are 
better  than  one,  and  if  my  physician  ever  makes  a 
mistake  of  this  kind  I  look  to  my  pharmacist  to  see 
that  it  shall  not  reach  the  practical  stage. 

I  recognize  the  great  value  and  service  of  the  de 
partment  store,  but  I  do  not  go  there  for  my  law  or 
medicine;  neither  do  I  care  to  resort  thither  for  my 
pharmacy.  I  want  our  separate  drug  stores  to  per 
sist,  and  I  want  them  to  remain  in  charge  of  experts. 

And  when  the  store  deals  in  other  things  than 
purely  therapeutic  preparations — which  I  have  al 
ready  said  I  think  probably  unavoidable, — I  want  it  to 
present  the  aspect  of  a  pharmacy  that  deals  also  in 
toilet  preparations  and  mineral  water,  not  of  an  es 
tablishment  for  dispensing  soda-water  and  soap, 
where  one  may  Lave  a  prescription  filled  on  the  side, 
in  an  emergency.  And  when  the  emergency  does 
arise,  I  should  have  the  pharmacy  respond  to  it.  It 
is  the  place  where  we  naturally  look  in  an  emergency 
—the  spot  to  which  the  victim  of  an  accident  is  car 
ried  directly — the  one  where  the  lady  bends  her  steps 
when  she  feels  that  she  is  going  to  faint.  In  hundreds 
of  cases  the  drug  store  is  our  only  standby,  and  it 
should  be  the  druggist's  business  to  see  that  it  never 
fails  us.  There  are  pharmacies  where  a  telephone 
message  brings  an  unfailing  response;  there  are 
others  to  which  one  would  as  soon  think  of  sending 
an  inquiry  regarding  a  Biblical  quotation.  To  which 
type,  do  you  think,  will  the  public  prefer  to  resort? 

Then  there  are  those  little  courtesies  that  no  re 
tail  business  is  obliged  to  offer,  but  that  the  public 
has  been  accustomed  to  expect  from  the  druggist— 
the  cashing  of  checks,  the  changing  of  bills,  the 
furnishing  of  postage  stamps,  the  consultation  of  the 


DRUGS    AND    THE    MAN  241 

city  directory.  There  can  be  110  reason  for  resorting 
to  a  drug  store  for  all  these  favors  except  that  the 
pharmacist  has  an  enviable  reputation  as  the  man 
who  is  most  likely  to  grant  them.  And  yet  I  begin  to 
hear  druggists  complaining  of  the  results  of  this 
reputation,  of  which  they  ought  to  be  proud;  I  see 
them  pointing  out  that  there  is  no  profit  on  postage 
stamps  and  no  commission  for  changing  a  bill.  They 
intimate,  further,  that  although  it  may  be  proper  for 
them  to  put  themselves  out  for  regular  customers,  it 
is  absurd  for  strangers  to  ask  for  these  courtesies.  I 
marvel  when  I  hear  these  sentiments.  If  this  popu 
lar  impression  regarding  the  courtesy  of  the  drug 
gist  did  not  exist,  it  would  be  worth  the  expenditure 
o'f  vast  sums  and  the  labor  of  a  lifetime  to  create  it. 
To  deliberately  undo  it  would  be  as  foolish  as  to  lock 
the  door  in  the  face  of  customers. 

I  do  not  believe  that  in  St.  Louis  the  pharmaceuti 
cal  profession  is  generally  averse  to  a  reputation  for 
generous  public  service,  and  I  base  my  belief  on  some 
degree  of  personal  knowledge.  The  St.  Louis  Public 
Library  operates  about  sixty  delivery  stations  in  vari 
ous  parts  of  the  city.  These  stations  are  all  in  drug 
stores.  The  work  connected  with  them,  though  light, 
is  by  no  means  inconsiderable,  and  yet  not  one  of  the 
druggists  who  undertake  it  charges  the  library  a  cent 
for  his  space  or  his  services.  Doubtless  they  expect 
a  return  from  the  increased  attractiveness  of  their 
places  to  the  public.  I  hope  that  they  get  it  and  I  be 
lieve  that  they  do.  At  any  rate  we  have  evidence  here 
of  the  pharmacist's  belief  that  the  bread  of  public 
service,  cast  upon  the  waters,  will  sooner  or  later  re 
turn. 

You  will  notice  that  I  am  saying  nothing  about 
advertising.  One  would  think  from  the  pharmaceuti 
cal  papers,  with  which  I  am  not  unfamiliar,  that  the 


242  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

druggist's  chief  end  was  to  have  a  sensational  show 
window  of  some  kind.  These  things  are  not  unim 
portant,  but  I  do  not  dwell  on  them  because  I  believe 
that  if  a  druggist  realizes  the  importance  of  his  pro 
fession  ;  if  he  makes  himself  a  recognized  expert  in  it; 
if  he  sticks  to  it  and  magnifies  it;  if  he  makes  his 
place  indispensable  to  the  community  around  him, 
the  first  point  to  which  the  citizens  resort  for  help  in 
an  emergency,  an  unfailing  center  of  courtesy  and 
favor — he  may  fill  his  window  with  toilet  soap,  or 
monkeys,  or  with  nothing  at  all — there  will  still  be  a 
trodden  path  up  to  his  door. 

Gentlemen,  you  have  chosen  as  your  life  work  a 
profession  that  I  believe  to  be  indispensable  to  human 
welfare — one  of  enviable  tradition  and  honor  and 
with  standing  and  reputation  in  the  community  that 
set  it  apart,  in  some  degree  from  all  others.  And 
while  I  would  not  Imve  you  neglect  the  material  suc 
cess  that  it  may  bring  you,  I  would  urge  you  to  expect 
this  as  a  result  rather  than  strive  for  it  as  an  immedi 
ate  end.  I  would  have  you  labor  to  maintain  and 
develop  the  special  knowledge  that  you  have  gained  in 
tin's  institution,  to  hold  up  the  standard  of  courtesy 
and  helpfulness  under  which  you  can  best  do  public 
service,  confident  that  if  you  do  these  things,  business 
standing  and  financial  success  will  also  be  added  unto 
you. 


HOW   THE   COMMUNITY  EDUCATES   ITSELF* 

In  endeavoring  to  distinguish  between  self-educa 
tion  and  education  by  others,  one  meets  with  consid 
erable  difficulty.  If  a  boy  reads  Mill's  "Political 
Economy"  he  is  surely  educating  himself;  but  if  after 
reading  each  chapter  he  visits  a  class  and  answers 
certain  questions  propounded  for  the  purpose  of  as* 
certaining  whether  he  has  read  it  at  all,  or  has  read  it 
understandingly,  then  w7e  are  accustomed  to  transfer 
the  credit  for  the  educative  process  to  the  questioner, 
and  say  that  the  boy  has  been  educated  at  school  or 
college.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  think  most  of  us  are 
self-educated.  Not  only  is  most  of  what  an  adult 
knows  and  can  do,  acquired  outside  of  school,  but  in 
most  of  what  he  learned  even  there  he  was  self-taught. 
His  so-called  teachers  assigned  tasks  to  him  and  saw 
that  he  performed  them.  If  he  did  not,  they  subject 
ed  him  to  discipline.  Once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime  most 
of  us  have  run  up  against  a  real  teacher — a  man  or  a 
woman  that  really  played  a  major  part  in  shaping 
our  minds  as  they  now  are — our  stock  of  knowledge, 
our  ways  of  thought,  our  methods  of  doing  things. 
These  men  have  stood  and  are  still  standing  (though 
they  may  have  joined  the  great  majority  long  ago) 
athwart  the  stream  of  sensation  as  it  passes  through 
us,  and  are  determining  what  part  shall  be  stored  up, 
and  where;  what  kind  of  action  shall  ultimately  re 
sult  from  it.  The  influence  of  a  good  teacher  spreads 
farther  and  lasts  longer  than  that  of  any  other  man. 
If  his  words  have  been  recorded  in  books  it  may  reach 
across  the  seas  and  down  the  ages. 

*  Read  before  the  American  Library  Association,  Asbury  Park,  N.  J., 
June  27,  1916. 


L'-H  UI'.KAlilAN'S    OPEN    S1JKLF 

There  is  another  reason  why  the  distinction  be 
tween  school  education  and  self-education  breaks 
down.  If  the  boy  with  whom  Ave  began  had  any 
teacher  at  all  it  was  John  Stuart  Mill,  and  this  man 
was  his  teacher  whether  or  not  his  reading  of  the 
book  was  prescribed  and  tested  in  a  class-room.  I 
would  not  have  you  think  that  I  would  abolish 
schools  and  colleges.  I  wish  we  had  more  of  the  right 
kind,  but  the  chief  factor  in  educative  acquirement 
will  still  be  the  pupil. 

So  when  the  community  educates  itself,  as  it 
doubtless  does  and  as  it  must  do,  it  simply  continues 
a  process  with  which  it  has  always  been  familiar,  but 
without  control,  or  under  its  own  control.  Of  all  the 
things  that  we  learn,  control  is  the  most  vital.  What 
we  are  is  the  sum  of  those  things  that  Ave  do  not  re 
press.  We  begin  Avithout  self -repression  and  have  to 
be  controlled  by  others.  When  we  learn  to  exercise 
control  ourselves,  it  is  right  that  even  our  education 
should  revert  wholly  to  Avhat  it  has  long  been  in 
greater  part—a  voluntary  process. 

This  does  not  mean  that  at  this  time  the  pupil 
abandons  guidance.  It  means  that  he  is  free  to 
choose  his  OAVU  guides  and  the  place  and  method  of 
using  them.  Some  rely  wholly  on  experience;  others 
are  wise  enough  to  see  that  life  is  too  short  and  too 
narrow  to  acquire  all  that  we  need,  and  they  set 
about  to  make  use  also  of  that  acquired  by  others. 
Some  of  these  wiser  ones  use  only  their  companions 
and  acquaintances;  others  read  books.  The  wisest 
are  opportunists;  they  make  use  of  all  these  methods 
as  they  have  occasion.  Their  reading  does  not  make 
them  avoid  the  exchange  of  ideas  by  conversation, 
nor  does  the  acquirement  of  ideas  in  either  way  pre 
clude  learning  daily  by  experience,  or  make  reflection 
useless  or  unnecessarv. 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    COMMUNITY     245 


He  who  lives  a  full  life  acquires  ideas  as  he  may, 
causes  them  to  combine,  change  and  generate  in  his 
own  mind,  and  then  translates  them  into  action  of 
some  kind.  He  who  omits  any  of  these  things  can 
not  be  said  to  have  really  lived.  He  cannot,  it  is  true, 
fail  to  acquire  ideas  unless  he  is  an  idiot  ;  but  he  may 
fail  to  acquire  them  broadly,  and  may  even  make  the 
mistake  of  thinking  that  he  can  create  them  in  his 
own  mind. 

He  may,  however,  acquire  fully  and  then  merely 
store  without  change  or  combination  ;  that  is,  he  may 
turn  his  brain  into  a  warehouse  instead  of  using  it 
as  a  factory. 

And  the  man  who  has  acquired  broadly  and 
worked  over  his  raw  material  into  a  product  of  his 
own,  may  still  stop  there  and  never  do  anything. 
Our  whole  organism  is  subsidiary  to  action  and  he 
who  stops  short  of  it  has  surely  failed  to  live. 

Our  educative  processes,  so  far,  have  dwelt  heavily 
on  acquirement,  somewhat  lightly  on  mental  assimi 
lation  and  digestion,  and  have  left  action  almost  un 
touched.     In  these  two  latter  respects,  especially,  k 
the  community  self-educated. 

The  fact  that  I  am  saying  this  here,  and  to  you, 
is  a  sufficient  guaranty  that  I  am  to  lay  some  em 
phasis  on  the  part  played  by  books  in  these  self  -edu 
cative  processes.  A  book  is  at  once  a  carrier  and  a 
tool;  it  transports  the  idea  and  plants  it.  It  is  a 
carrier  both  in  time  and  in  space  —  the  idea  that  it 
implants  may  be  a  foreign  idea,  or  an  ancient  idea, 
or  both.  Either  of  its  functions  may  for  the  moment 
be  paramount;  a  book  may  bring  to  you  ideas  whose 
implantation  your  brain  resists,  or  it  may  be  used  to 
implant  ideas  that  are  already  present,  as  when  an 
instructor  uses  his  own  text  book.  Neither  of  these 
twro  cases  represents  education  in  the  fullest  sense. 


240  LIBRARIANS    OPEN    SHELF 

You  will  notice  that  I  have  not  yet  defined  educa 
tion.  I  do  not  intend  to  try,  for  my  time  is  limited. 
But  in  the  course  of  my  own  educative  processes, 
which  I  trust  are  still  proceeding,  the  tendency  grows 
stronger  and  stronger  to  insist  on  an  intimate  con 
nection  with  reality  in  all  education — to  making  it 
a  realization  that  we  are  to  do  something  and  a  yearn 
ing  to  be  able  to  do  it.  The  man  who  has  never  run 
up  against  things  as  they  are,  who  lias  lived  in  a 
world  of  moonshine,  who  sees  crooked  and  attempts 
what  is  impossible  and  what  is  useless — is  he  educa 
ted?  I  used  to  wonder  what  a  realist  was.  Now 
that  I  am  becoming  one  myself  I  begin  dimly  to  un 
derstand.  He  certainly  is  not  a  man  devoid  of  ideals, 
but  they  are  real  ideals,  if  you  will  pardon  the  bull. 

I  believe  that  I  am  in  goodly  company.  The  li 
brary  as  I  see  it  has  also  set  its  face  toward  the  real. 
What  else  is  meant  by  our  business  branches,  our 
technology  rooms,  our  legislative  and  municipal  re 
ference  departments?  They  mean  that  slow  as  we 
may  be  to  respond  to  community  thought  and  to  do 
our  part  in  carrying  on  community  education,  we  are 
vastly  more  sensitive  than  the  school,  which  still 
turns  up  its  nose  at  efforts  like  the  Gary  system ; 
than  the  stage,  which  still  teaches  its  actors  to  ne 
stagy  instead  of  natural;  even  than  the  producers 
of  the  very  literature  that  we  help  to  circulate,  who 
rarely  know  how  even  to  represent  the  conversation 
of  two  human  beings  as  it  really  is.  And  when  a 
great  new  vehicle  of  popular  artistic  expression 
arises,  like  the  moving  picture,  those  who  purvey  it 
spend  their  millions  to  build  mock  cities  instead  of  to 
reproduce  the  reality  that  it  is  their  special  privilege 
to  be  able  to  show.  And  they  hire  stage  actors  to 
show  off  their  stagiuess  on  the  screen — staginess  that 
is  a  thousand  times  more  stagy  because  its  back- 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    COMMUNITY     247 

ground  is  of  waving  foliage  and  glimmering  water, 
instead  of  the  painted  canvas  in  front  of  which  it 
belongs.  The  heart  of  the  community  is  right.  Its 
heroine  is  Mary  Pickford.  It  rises  to  realism  as  one 
man.  The  little  dog  who  cannot  pose,  and  who  pants 
and  wags  his  tail  on  the  screen  as  he  would  anywhere 
else,  elicits  thunderous  applause.  The  baby  who 
puckers  up  its  face  and  cries,  oblivious  of  its  environ 
ment,  is  always  a  favorite.  But  the  trend  of  all  this, 
these  institutions  cannot  see.  We  librarians  are  see 
ing  it  a  little  more  clearly.  We  may  see  it — we  shall 
see  it,  more  clearly  still. 

The  self-education  of  a  community  often  depends 
very  closely  on  bonds  of  connection  already  estab 
lished  between  the  minds  of  that  community's  indi 
vidual  members.  Sometimes  it  depends  on  a  sudden 
connection  made  through  the  agency  of  a  single  event 
of  overwhelming  importance  and  interest.  Let  me  il- 
Instrate  what  I  mean  by  connection  of  this  kind.  For 
many  years  it  was  my  duty  to  cross  the  Hudson  river 
twice  daily  on  a  crowded  ferry-boat,  and  it  used  to 
interest  me  to  watch  the  behavior  of  the  crowds  under 
tiie  influence  of  simple  impulses  affecting  them  all 
alike.  I  am  happy  to  say  that  I  never  had  an  op 
portunity  of  observing  the  effect  of  complex  impulses 
such  as  those  of  panic  terror.  I  used  particularly  to 
watch,  from  the  vantage  point  of  a  stairway  whence 
I  could  look  over  their  heads,  the  behavior  of  the 
crowd  standing  in  the  cabin  just  before  the  boat  made 
its  landing.  Each  person  in  the  crowd  stood  still 
quietly,  and  the  tendency  was  toward  a  loose  forma 
tion  to  ensure  comfort  and  some  freedom  of  move 
ment.  At  the  same  time  each  was  ready  and  anxious 
to  move  forward  as  soon  as  the  landing  should  be 
made.  Only  those  in  front  could  see  the  bow  of  the 
ferryboat;  the  others  could  see  nothing  but  the  per- 


248  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

sons  directly  in  front  of  them.  When  those  in  the 
front  rank  saw  that  the  landing  was  very  near  they 
began  to  move  forward;  those  just  behind  followed 
suit  and  so  on  to  the  rear.  The  result  was  that  I  saw 
a  wave  of  compression,  of  the  same  sort  as  a  sound 
wave  in  air,  move  through  the  throng.  The  indivi 
dual  motions  were  forward  but  the  wave  moved  back 
ward.  No  better  example  of  a  wave  of  this  kind 
could  be  devised.  Now  the  actions  and  reactions  be 
tween  the  air-particles  in  a  sound  wave  are  purely 
mechanical.  Not  so  here.  There  was  neither  push 
ing  nor  pulling  of  the  ordinary  kind.  Each  person 
moved  forward  because  his  mind  was  fixed  on  moving 
forward  at  the  earliest  opportunity,  and  because  the 
forward  movement  of  those  just  in  front  showed  him 
that  now  was  the  time  and  the  opportunity.  The 
physical  link,  if  there  was  one,  properly  speaking, 
between  one  movement  and  another  was  something 
like  this:  A  wave  of  light,  reflected  from  the  body 
of  the  man  in  front,  entered  the  eye  of  the  man  just 
behind,  where  it  was  transformed  into  a  nerve  im 
pulse  that  reached  the  brain  through  the  optic  nerve1. 
Here  it  underwent  complicated  transformations  and 
reactions  whose  nature  we  can  but  surmise,  until  it 
left  the  brain  as  a  motor  impulse  and  caused  the  leg 
muscles  to  contract,  moving  their  owner  forward. 
All  this  may  or  may  not  have  taken  place  within 
the  sphere  of  consciousness;  in  the  most  cases  it  had 
happened  so  often  that  it  had  been  relegated  to  that 
of  unconscious  cerebration. 

I  have  entered  into  so  much  detail  because  I  want 
to  make*  it  clear  that  a  connection  may  be  established 
between  members  of  a  group,  even  so  casual  a  group 
as  that  of  persons  who  happen  to  cross  on  the  same 
ferry  boat,  that  is  so  real  and  compelling,  that  its 
results  simulate  those  of  physical  forces.  In  this 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    COMMUNITY     240 

case  the  results  were  dependent  on  the  existence  in 
the  crowd  of  one  common  bond  of  interest.  They 
all  wanted  to  leave  the  ferry  boat  as  soon  as  pos 
sible,  and  by  its  bow.  If  some  of  them  had  wanted 
to  stay  on  the  boat  and  go  back  with  it,  or  if  it  had 
been  a  river  steamboat  where  landings  were  made 
from  several  gangways  in  different  parts  of  the  boat 
the  simple  wave  of  compression  that  I  saw  would  not 
have  been  set  up.  In  like  manner  the  ordinary  in 
fluences  that  act  on  men's  minds  tend  in  all  sorts  of 
directions  and  their  results  are  not  easily  traced.  Oc 
casionally,  however,  there  occurs  some  event  so  great 
that  it  turns  us  all  in  the  same  direction  and  estab 
lishes  a  common  network  of  psychical  connections. 
Such  an  event  fosters  community  education. 

We  have  lately  witnessed  such  a  phenomenon  in 
the  sudden  outbreak  of  the  great  European  War. 
Probably  no  person  in  the  community  as  we  libra 
rians  know  it  remained  unaffected  by  this  event.  In 
most  it  aroused  some  kind  of  a  desire  to  know  what 
was  going  on.  It  was  necessary  that  most  of  us 
should  knoAv  a  little  more  than  we  did  of  the  dif 
ferences  in  racial  temperament  and  aim  among  the 
inhabitants  of  the  warring  nations,  of  such  move 
ments  as  Pan-Slavism  and  Pan-Germanism,  of  the 
recent  political  history  of  Europe,  of  modern  mili 
tary  tactics  and  strategy,  of  international  law,  of 
geography,  of  the  pronunciation  of  foreign  place- 
names,  of  the  chemistry  of  explosives— of  a  thousand 
things  regarding  which  we  had  hitherto  lacked  the 
impulse  to  inform  ourselves.  This  sort  of  thing  is 
going  on  in  a  community  every  day,  but  here  was  a 
catastrophe  setting  in  motion  a  mighty  brain-wave 
that  had  twisted  us  all  in  one  direction.  Notice  now 
what  a  conspicuous  vole  our  public  libraries  play  in 
phenomena  of  this  kind.  In  the  first  place,  the  news- 


250  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

paper  and  periodical  press  reflects  at  once  the  in 
terest  that  has  been  aroused.  Where  man's  unaided 
curiosity  would  suggest  one  question  it  adds  a  hun 
dred  others.  Problems  that  would  otherwise  seem 
simple  enough  now  appear  complex — the  whole  men 
tal  interest  is  intensified.  At  the  same  time  there 
is  an  attempt  to  satisfy  the  questions  thus  raised. 
The  man  who  did  not  know  about  the  Belgian  treaty, 
or  the  possible  use  of  submarines  as  commerce-des 
troyers,  has  all  the  issues  put  before  him  with  at 
least  an  attempt  to  settle  them.  This  service  of  the 
press  to  community  education  would  be  attempted, 
but  it  would  not  be  successfully  rendered,  without 
the  aid  of  the  public  library,  for  it  has  come  to  pass 
that  the  library  is  now  almost  the  only  non-partisan 
institution  that  we  possess;  and  community  educa 
tion,  to  be  effective,  must  be  non-partisan.  The  press 
is  almost  necessarily  biassed.  The  man  who  is  preju 
diced  prefers  the  paper  or  the  magazine  that  will 
cater  to  his  prejudices,  inflame  them,  cause  him  to 
think  that  they  are  reasoned  results  instead  of  pre 
judices.  If  he  keeps  away  from  the  public  library 
he  may  succeed  in  blinding  himself;  if  he  uses  it  he 
can  hardly  do  so.  He  will  find  there  not  only  his 
own  side  but  all  the  others;  if  he  has  the  ordinary 
curiosity  that  is  our  mortal  heritage  he  cannot  help 
glancing  at  the  opinions  of  others  occasionally.  No 
man  is  really  educated  who  does  not  at  least  know 
that  another  side  exists  to  the  question  on  which  he 
has  already  made  up  his  mind — or  had  it  made  up 
for  him. 

Further,  no  one  is  content  to  stop  with  the  ordi 
nary  periodical  literature.  The  flood  of  books  in 
spired  by  this  war  is  one  of  the  most  astonishing 
things  about  it.  Most  libraries  are  struggling  to  keep 
up  with  it  in  some  degree.  Very  few  of  these  books 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    COMMUNITY     251 

would  be  within  the  reach  of  most  of  us  were  it  not 
for  the  library. 

I  beg  you  to  notice  the  difference  in  the  reaction 
of  the  library  to  this  war  and  that  of  the  public  school 
as  indicative  of  the  difference  between  formal  educa 
tive  processes,  as  we  carry  them  on,  and  the  self- 
education  of  the  community.  I  have  emphasized  the 
freedom  of  the  library  from  bias.  The  school  is 
necessarily  biassed — perhaps  properly  so.  You  re 
member  the  story  of  the  candidate  for  a  district 
school  who,  when  asked  by  an  examining  committee- 
man  whether  the  earth  was  round  or  flat,  replied, 
"Well,  some  says  one  and  some  t'other.  I  teach 
either  round  or  flat,  as  the  parents  wish." 

Now,  there  are  books  that  maintain  the  flatness 
of  the  earth,  and  they  properly  find  a  place  on  the 
shelves  of  large  public  libraries.  Those  who  wish  to 
compare  the  arguments  pro  and  con  are  at  liberty  to 
do  so.  Even  in  such  a  res  adjudicata  as  this  the  li 
brary  takes  no  sides.  But  in  spite  of  the  obliging 
school  candidate,  the  school  cannot  proceed  in  this 
way.  The  teaching  of  the  child  must  be  definite. 
And  there  are  other  subjects,  historical  ones  for  in 
stance,  in  which  the  school's  attitude  may  be  deter 
mined  by  its  location,  its  environment,  its  manage 
ment,  When  it  is  a  public  school  and  its  controlling 
authority  is  really  trying  to  give  impartial  instruc 
tion  there  are  some  subjects  that  must  simply  be 
skipped,  leaving  them  to  be  covered  by  post-scholastic 
community  education.  This  is  the  school's  limita 
tion.  Only  the  policy  of  caution  is  very  apt  to  be 
carried  too  far.  Thus  we  find  that  in  the  school  the 
immense  educational  drive  of  the  European  War  has 
not  been  utilized  as  it  has  in  the  community  at  large. 
In  some  places  the  school  authorities  have  erected 
a  barrier  against  it.  So  far  as  they  are  concerned 


252  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

the  war  has  been  non-existent.  This  difference  be- 
between  the  library  and  the  school  appears  in  such 
reports  as  the  following  from  a  branch  librarian: 

"Throughout  the  autumn  and  most  of  the  winter 
we  found  it  absolutely  impossible  to  supply  the  de 
mand  for  books  about  the  war.  Everything  we  had 
on  the  subject  or  akin  to  it — books,  magazines, 
pamphlets — were  in  constant  use.  Books  of  travel 
and  history  about  the  warring  countries  became 
popular — things  that  for  years  had  been  used  but 
rarely  became  suddenly  vitally  interesting. 

"I  have  been  greatly  interested  by  the  fact  that 
the  high  school  boys  and  girls  never  ask  for  anything 
about  the  war.  Not  once  during  the  winter  have  I 
seen  in  one  of  them  a  spark  of  interest  in  the  sub 
ject.  It  seems  so  strange  that  it  should  be  neces 
sary  to  keep  them  officially  ignorant  of  this  great 
war  because  the  grandfather  of  one  spoke  French 
and  of  another  German." 

Another  librarian  says: 

"The  war  again  lias  naturally  stimulated  an  in 
terest  in  maps.  With  every  turn  in  military  affairs, 
new  ones  are  issued  and  added  to  our  collection. 
These  maps,  as  received,  have  been  exhibited  for 
short  periods  upon  screens  and  they  have  never 
lacked  an  appreciative  line  of  spectators,  represent 
ing  all  nationalities." 

One  noticeable  effect  of  the  war  in  libraries  has 
been  to  stimulate  the  marking  of  books,  periodicals 
and  newspapers  by  readers,  especially  in  periodical 
rooms.  Readers  with  strong  feelings  cannot  resist 
annotating  articles  or  chapters  that  express  opinions 
in  which  they  cannot  concur.  Pictures  of  generals 
or  royalties  are  especially  liable  to  defacement  with 
opprobrious  epithets.  This  feeling  extends  even  to 
bulletins.  Libraries  receive  strenuous  protests 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    COMMUNITY    253 

against  the  display  of  portraits  and  other  material 
relating  to  one  of  the  contesting  parties  without 
similar  material  on  the  other  side  to  offset  it. 

"Efforts  to  be  strictly  neutral  have  not  always 
met  with  success,  some  readers  apparently  regard 
ing  neutrality  as  synonymous  with  suppression  of 
everything  favorable  to  the  opposite  side.  One  li 
brary  reports  that  the  display  of  an  English  military 
portrait  called  forth  an  energetic  protest  because  it 
was  not  balanced  by  a  German  one." 

Such  manifestations  as  these  are  merely  symp 
toms.  The  impulse  of  the  war  toward  community 
education  is  a  tremendous  one  and  it  is  not  strange 
that  it  should  find  an  outlet  in  all  sorts  of  odd  ways. 
The  German  sympathizer  who  would  not  ordinarily 
think  of  objecting  to  the  display  of  an  English  por 
trait,  and  in  fact  would  probably  not  think  of  ex 
amining  it  closely  enough  to  know  whether  it  was 
English  or  Austrian,  has  now  become  alert.  His 
alertness  makes  him  open  to  educative  influences,  but 
it  may  also  show  itself  in  such  ways  as  that  just 
noted. 

Keeping  the  war  out  of  the  schools  is  of  course 
a  purely  local  phenomenon,  to  be  deprecated  where 
it  occurs.  The  library  can  do  its  part  here  also. 

"G.  Stanley  Hall  believes  that  the  problem  of 
teaching  the  war  is  how  to  utilize  in  the  very  best 
way  the  wonderful  opportunity  to  open,  see  and  feel 
the  innumerable  and  vital  lessons  involved."  Com 
menting  on  this  a  children's  librarian  says:  "The  un 
paralleled  opportunity  offered  to  our  country,  and 
the  new  complex  problems  presented  by  these  new 
conditions  should  make  the  children's  librarian  pause 
and  take  heed. 

"Can  we  do  our  part  toward  using  the  boy's  loy 
alty  to  his  gang  or  his  nine,  his  love  of  his  country, 


254  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

his  respect  for  our  flag,  his  devotion  to  our  heroes, 
in  developing  a  sense  of  human  brotherhood  which 
alone  can  prevent  or  delay  in  the  next  generation 
another  such  catastrophe  as  the  one  we  face  to-day?" 

Exclusion  of  the  wrar  from  the  schools  is  partly 
the  outcome  of  the  general  attitude  of  most  of  our 
schoolmen,  who  object  to  the  teaching  of  a  subject  as 
an  incidental.  Arithmetic  must  be  studied  for  itself 
alone.  To  absorb  it  as  a  by-product  of  shop- work,  as 
is  done  in  Gary,  is  inadmissible.  But  it  is  also  a  re 
sult  of  the  fear  that  teaching  the  war  at  all  would 
necessarily  mean  a  partisan  teaching  of  it — a  conclu 
sion  which  perhaps  we  cannot  condemn  when  we  re 
member  the  partisan  instruction  in  various  other 
subjects  for  which  our  schools  are  responsible. 

Again,  this  exclusion  is  doubtless  aided  by  the  ef 
forts  of  some  pacifists,  who  believe  that,  ostrich-like, 
we  should  hide  our  heads  in  the  sand,  to  avoid  ac 
knowledging  the  existence  of  something  we  do  not 
like.  "Why  war?"  asks  a  recent  pamphlet.  Why, 
indeed?  But  we  may  ask  in  turn  "Why  fire?"  "Why 
flood?"  I  cannot  answer  these  questions,  but  it 
would  be  foolish  to  act  as  if  the  scourges  did  not  exist. 
Nay,  I  hasten  to  insure  myself  against  them,  though 
the  possibility  that  they  will  injure  me  is  remote. 
This  ultra-pacifist  attitude  has  gone  further  than 
school  education  and  is  trying  to  put  the  lid  on  com 
munity  education  also.  Objection,  for  instance,  has 
been  made  to  an  exhibit  of  books,  prints  and  posters 
about  the  war,  which  was  displayed  in  the  St.  Louis 
Public  Library  for  nearly  two  months.  We  intended 
to  let  it  stand  for  about  a  week,  but  the  public  would 
not  allow  this.  The  community  insists  on  self-edu 
cation  even  against  the  will  of  its  natural  allies.  The 
contention  that  we  are  cultivating  the  innate  blood- 
thirstiness  of  our  public,  I  regard  as  absurd. 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    COMMUNITY     255 

What  can  we  do  toward  generating  or  taking  ad 
vantage  of  other  great  driving  impulses  toward  com 
munity  education?  Must  we  wait  for  the  horrors  of 
a  great  war  to  teach  us  geography,  industrial  chem 
istry  and  international  law?  Is  it  necessary  to  burn 
down  a  house  every  time  we  want  to  roast  a  pig? 
Certainly  not.  But  just  as  one  would  not  think  of 
bringing  on  any  kind  of  a  catastrophe  in  order  to 
utilize  its  shock  for  educational  purposes,  so  also  I 
doubt  very  much  whether  we  need  concern  ourselves 
about  the  initiation  of  any  impulse  toward  popular 
education.  These  impulses  exist  everywhere  in  great 
number  and  variety  and  we  need  only  to  select  the 
right  one  and  reinforce  it.  Attempts  to  generate 
others  are  rarely  effective.  When  we  hear  the  rich 
mellow  tone  of  a  great  organ  pipe,  it  is  difficult  to 
realize  that  all  the  pipe  does  is  to  reinforce  a  selected 
tone  among  thousands  of  indistinguishable  noises 
made  by  the  air  rushing  through  a  slit  and  striking 
against  an  edge.  Yet  this  is  the  fact.  These  in 
cipient  impulses  permeate  the  community  all  about 
us;  all  we  have  to  do  is  to  select  one,  feed  it  and 
give  it  play  and  we  shall  have  an  "educational  move 
ment."  This  fact  is  strongly  impressed  upon  any 
one  working  with  clubs.  If  it  is  desired  to  foster 
some  movement  by  means  of  an  organization,  it  is 
rarely  necessary  to  form  one  for  the  purpose.  Every 
community  teems  with  clubs,  associations  and  circles. 
All  that  is  needed  is  to  capture  the  right  one  and 
back  it  up.  Politicians  well  understand  this  art  of 
capture  and  use  it  often  for  evil  purposes.  In  the 
librarian's  hands  it  becomes  an  instrument  for  good. 
Better  than  to  offer  a  course  of  twenty  lectures  under 
the  auspices  of  the  library  is  it  to  capture  a  club, 
give  it  house-room,  and  help  it  with  its  program.  I 
am  proud  of  the  fact  that  in  fifteen  public  rooms  in 


256  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

our  library,  about  four  thousand  meetings  are  held 
in  the  course  of  the  year;  but  I  ain  inclined  to  be 
still  prouder  of  the  fact  that  not  one  of  these  is  held 
formally  under  the  auspices  of  the  library  or  is 
visibly  patronized  by  it.  To  go  back  to  our  thesis, 
all  education  is  self-education;  we  can  only  select, 
guide  and  strengthen,  but  when  we  have  done  these 
things  adequately,  we  have  done  a  very  great  work 
indeed. 

What  is  true  of  assemblies  and  clubs  is  also  true 
of  the  selection  and  use  of  books.  A  book  pur 
chased  in  response  to  a  demand  is  worth  a  dozen 
bought  because  the  librarian  thinks  the  library  ought 
to  have  them.  The  possibilities  of  free  suggestion  by 
the  community  are,  it  seems  to  me,  far  from  realized, 
yet  even  as  it  is,  I  believe  that  librarians  have  an 
unexampled  opportunity  of  feeling  out  promising 
tendencies  in  this  great  flutter  of  educational  impul 
ses  all  about  us,  and  so  of  selecting  the  right  ones 
and  helping  them  on. 

Almost  while  I  have  been  writing  this  I  have  been 
visited  by  a  delegate  from  the  foundrymen's  club— 
an  organization  that  wants  more  books  on  foundry 
practice  and  wants  them  placed  together  in  a  con 
venient  spot.  Such  a  visit  is  of  course  a  heaven-sent 
opportunity  and  I  suppose  I  betrayed  something  of 
my  pleasure  in  my  manner.  My  visitor  said,  "I  am 
so  glad  you  feel  this  way  about  it;  we  have  been 
meaning  for  some  time  to  call  on  you,  but  we  were 
in  doubt  about  how  we  should  be  received.'1  Such 
moments  are  humiliating  to  the  librarian.  Great 
heavens !  Have  we  advertised,  discussed,  talked  and 
plastered  our  towns  with  publicity,  only  to  learn  at 
last  that  the  spokesman  of  a  body  of  respectable  men, 
asking  legitimate  service,  rather  expects  to  be  kicked 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    COMMUNITY     257 

downstairs  than  otherwise  when  he  approaches  us? 
Is  our  publicity  failing  in  quantity  or  in  quality? 

Whatever  may  be  the  matter,  it  is  in  response  to 
demands  like  this  that  the  library  must  play  its  part 
in  community  education.  Here  as  elsewhere  it  is  the 
foundrymen  who  are  the  important  factors — their  at 
titude,  their  desires,  their  capabilities.  Our  func 
tion  is  that  of  the  organ  pipe — to  pick  out  the 
impulse,  respond  to  it  and  give  it  volume  jind 
carrying  power.  The  community  will  educate  itself 
whether  we  help  or  not,  It  is  permeated  by  lines 
of  intelligence  as  the  magnetic  field  is  by  lines  of 
force.  Thrust  in  a  bit  of  soft  iron  and  the  force- 
lines  will  change  their  direction  in  order  to  pass 
through  the  iron.  Thrust  a  book  into  the  community 
field,  and  its  lines  of  intelligence  will  change  direc 
tion  in  order  to  take  in  the  contents  of  the  book.  If 
we  could  map  out  the  field  we  should  see  great  mas 
ses  of  lines  sweeping  through  our  public  libraries. 

All  about  us  we  see  men  who  tell  us  that  they 
despair  of  democracy;  that  at  any  rate,  whatever  its 
advantages,  democracy  can  never  be  "efficient."  Ef 
ficient  for  what?  Efficiency  is  a  relative  quality,  not 
absolute.  A  big  German  howitzer  would  be  about 
as  inefficient  a  tool  as  could  be  imagined,  for  serv 
ing  an  apple-pie.  Beside,  democracy  is  a  goal ;  we 
have  not  reached  it  yet;  we  shall  never  reach  it  if 
we  decide  that  it  is  undesirable.  The  path  toward  it 
is  the  path  of  Nature,  which  leads  through  conflicts, 
survivals,  and  modifications.  Part  of  it  is  the  path 
of  community  education,  which  I  believe  to  be  ef 
ficient  in  that  it  is  leading  on  toward  a  definite  goal. 
Part  of  Nature  is  man,  with  his  desires,  hopes  and 
abilities.  Some  men,  and  many  women,  are  libra 
rians,  in  whom  these  desires  and  hopes  have  definite 


258  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

aims  and  in  whom  the  corresponding  abilities  are 
more  or  less  developed.  We  are  all  thus  cogs  in  Na 
ture's  great  scheme  for  community  education ;  let  us 
be  intelligent  cogs,  and  help  the  movement  on  in 
stead  of  hindering  it. 


CLUBWOMEN'S  BEADING 

I— The  Malady 

A  WELL-DRESSED  woman  entered  the  Art  Depart 
ment  of  a  large  public  library.  "Have  you  any 
material  on  the  Medici?"  she  asked  the  custodian. 
"Yes;  just  what  kind  of  material  do  you  want?" 
"Stop  a  minute,"  cried  the  woman,  extending  a  de 
taining  hand;  "before  you  get  me  anything,  just  tell 
me  what  they  are!"  Librarians  are  trained  not  to 
laugh.  No  one  could  have  detected  the  ghost  of  a 
smile  on  this  one's  face  as  she  lifted  the  "M"  volume 
of  a  cyclopedia  from  a  shelf  and  placed  it  on  the 
table  before  the  seeker  after  knowledge.  "There; 
that  will  tell  you,"  she  said,  and  returned  to  her 
work. 

Not  long  afterward  she  was  summoned  by  a  beck 
oning  finger.  "I  can't  tell  from  this  book,"  said 
the  perplexed  student,  "whether  the  Medici  were  a 
family  or  a  race  of  people."  The  Art  Librarian  tried 
to  untie  this  knot,  but  it  was  not  long  before  another 
presented  itself."  "This  book  doesn't  explain,"  said 
the  troubled  investigator,  "whether  the  Medici  wer 
Florentines  or  Italians."  Still  without  a  quiver,  the 
art  assistant  emitted  the  required  drop  of  informa 
tion.  "Shan't  I  get  you  something  more  now?"  she 
asked.  "Oh,  no;  this  will  be  quite  sufficient,"  and 
taking  out  pencil  and  paper  the  inquirer  began  to 
write  rapidly  with  the  cyclopedia  propped  before  her. 
Presently,  when  the  Art  Librarian  looked  up,  her 
guest  had  disappeared.  But  she  was  on  hand  the 
next  morning.  "May  I  see  that  book  again?"  she 


260  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

asked  sweetly.  "There  are  some  words  here  in  my 
copy  that  I  can't  quite  make  out." 

On  another  occasion  a  reader,  of  the  same  sex, 
wandered  into  the  reading-room  and  began  to  gaze 
about  her  with  that  peculiar  sort  of  perplexed  aim- 
lessness  that  librarians  have  come  to  recognise  in 
stinctively  as  an  index  to  the  wearer's  state  of  mind. 
"Have  you  anything  on  American  travels?'1  she 
asked. 

"Do  you  mean  travels  in  America,  or  travels  by 
Americans  in  foreign  countries?" 

"Well;  I  don't  know — exactly." 

"Do  you  want  books  like  Dickens' s  American 
Notes,  that  give  a  foreigner's  impression  of  this  coun 
try  ?" 

"Ye-es — possibly." 

"Or  books  like  Hawthorne's  Note  Hook,  telling 
how  a  foreign  country  appears  to  an  American?" 

"We-ell;  perhaps." 

"Are  you  following  a  programme  of  reading?" 

"Yes." 

"May  I  see  it?    That  may  give  me  a  clue." 

"I  haven't  a  copy  here." 

"Can  you  give  me  the  name  of  the  person  or  com 
mittee  who  made  it?" 

"Oh,  I  made  it  myself  " 

This  was  a  "facer";  the  librarian  seemed  to  have 
brought  up  against  a  stone  wall,  but  she  waited, 
knowing  that  a  situation,  unlike  a  knot,  will  some 
times  untie  itself. 

The  seeker  after  knowledge  also  waited  for  a  time. 
Then  she  broke  out  animatedly : 

"Why,  I  just  wanted  American  travels,  don't  you 
know?  Funny  little  stories  and  things  about  the  sort 
of  Americans  that  go  abroad  with  a  bird-cage!" 

Just  what  books  were  given  to  her  I  do  not  know; 


CLUBWOMEN'S    HEADING  2<>1 

but  in  due  time  her  interesting  paper  before  the  Olla 
Podrida  Club  was  properly  noticed  in  the  local 
papers. 

In  another  case  a  perplexed  club- woman  came  to 
a  library  for  aid  in  making  a  programme  of  reading. 
"  Have  you  some  ideas  about  the  subject  you  want  to 
take  up?"  asked  the  reference  assistant. 

"Well,  we  had  thought  of  England,  or  perhaps 
Scotland;  and  some  of  us  would  like  the  Elizabethan 
Period." 

The  assistant,  after  some  faithful  work,  produced 
a  list  of  books  and  articles  on  each  of  these  some 
what  comprehensive  subjects  and  sent  them  to  the 
reader  for  selection.  "Which  did  you  finally  take?" 
she  asked  when  the  inquirer  next  visited  the  library. 

"Oh,  they  were  so  good,  we  decided  to  use  all  of 
them  this  year!" 

The  writer  is  no  pessimist,  These  stories  which 
are  as  true,  word  for  word,  as  any  tales  not  taken 
down  by  a  stenographer  (and  far  more  so  than  some 
that  are)  seemed  to  throw  the  persons  who  told  them 
into  a  sort  of  dumb  despair,  but  I  hastened  to  reas 
sure  them.  I  pointed  out  that  the  inquirers  after 
knowledge  had,  beyond  all  doubt,  obtained  some 
modicum  of  what  they  wanted.  If  the  lady  in  the 
first  tale,  for  instance,  had  mistakenly  supposed  that 
the  Medici  were  a  new  kind  of  dance  or  something  to 
eat,  she  surely  has  been  disabused.  And  her  cyclopedia 
article  was  probably  as  well  written  as  most  of  its 
kind,  so  that  a  literal  transcript  of  it  could  have  done 
no  harm  either  to  the  copyist  or  to  her  clubmates. 
And  the  paper  on  "American  Travels,"  and  the  com 
bined  lists  on  England,  Scotland  and  the  Elizabethan 
Period;  did  not  those  who  laboured  on  them,  or  with 
them,  acquire  information  in  the  process?  Most  as 
suredly! 


262  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Still,  I  must  confess  that,  in  advancing  these 
arguments,  I  feel  somewhat  like  an  advocatus  diaboli. 
It  is  all  very  well  to  treat  the  puzzled  clubwoman  as 
a  joke.  When  a  man  slips  on  a  banana-peel  and  goes 
down,  we  may  laugh  at  his  plight;  but  suppose  the 
whole  crowd  of  passers-by  began  to  pitch  and  slide 
and  tumble!  Should  we  not  think  that  some  horrible 
epidemic  had  laid  its  hand  on  us?  The  ladies  with 
their  Medici  and  their  Travels  are  not  isolated  in 
stances.  Ask  the  librarians;  they  know,  but  in  count 
less  instances  they  do  not  tell,  for  fear  of  casting 
ridicule  upon  the  hundreds  of  intelligent  clubwomen 
whom  they  are  proud  to  help.  In  many  libraries 
there  is  a  standing  rule  against  repeating  or  discus 
sing  the  errors  and  slips  of  the  public,  especially  to 
the  everhungry  reporter.  I  break  this  rule  here  with 
equanimity,  and  even  with  a  certain  degree  of  hope, 
for  my  object  is  to  awaken  my  readers  to  the  knowl 
edge  that  part  of  the  reading  public  is  suffering  from 
a  malady  of  some  kind.  Later  I  may  try  my  hand  at 
diagnosis  and  even  at  therapeutics.  And  I  am  taking 
as  an  illustration  chiefly  the  reading  done  by  women's 
clubs,  not  because  men  do  not  do  reading  of  the  same 
kind,  or  because  it  is  not  done  by  individuals  as  well 
as  by  groups;  but  because,  just  at  the  present  time, 
women  in  general,  and  clubwomen  in  particular, 
seem  especially  likely  to  be  attacked  by  the  disease. 
It  must  be  remembered  also  that  I  am  writing  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  public  library,  and  I  here  make 
humble  acknowledgement  of  the  fact  that  many 
things  in  the  educational  field,  both  good  and  bad,  go 
on  quite  outside  of  that  institution  and  beyond  its 
ken. 

The  intellectual  bonds  between  the  library  and  the 
woman's  club  have  alwavs  been  close.  Manv  libra- 


CLUBWOMEN'S    HEADING  263. 

ries  are  the  children  of  such  clubs;  inaiiy  clubs  have 
been  formed  in  and  by  libraries.  If  any  mistakes  are 
being  made  in  the  general  policies  and  program 
mes  of  club  reading,  the  librarian  would  naturally 
be  the  first  to  know  it,  and  he  ought  to  speak  out. 
He  does  know  it,  and  his  knowledge  should  become 
public  property  at  once.  But,  I  repeat,  although  the 
trouble  is  conspicuous  in  connection  with  the  reading 
of  Avomeu's  clubs,  it  is  far  more  general  and  deeply 
rooted  than  this. 

The  malady's  chief  symptom,  which  is  well  known 
to  all  librarians,  is  a  lack  of  correspondence  between 
certain  readers  and  the  books  that  they  choose. 
Reading,  like  conversation,  is  the  meeting  of  two 
minds.  If  there  is  no  contact,  the  process  fails.  If 
the  cogs  on  the  gearwheels  do  not  interact,  the  ma 
chine  can  not  work.  If  the  reader  of  a  book  on  al 
gebra  does  not  understand  arithmetic ;  if  he  tackles  a 
philosophical  essay  on  the  representative  function 
without  knowing  what  the  phrase  means;  if  he  tries 
to  read  a  French  book  without  knowing  the  language, 
his  mind  is  not  fitted  for  contact  with  that  of  the 
writer,  and  the  mental  machinery  will  not  move. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  Open  Shelf,  before  li 
brarians  had  realised  the  necessity  of  copious  assign 
ments  to  "floor  duty,"  and  before  there  were  chil 
dren's  librarians,  I  saw  in  a  branch  library  a  small 
child  staggering  under  the  weight  of  a  volume  of 
Schaff's  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  which  he 
had  taken  from  the  shelves  and  was  presenting  at 
the  desk  to  be  charged.  "You  are  not  going  to  read 
that,  are  you?"  said  the  desk  assistant. 

"It  isn't  for  me;  it's  for  me  big  brudder." 

"What  did  your  big  brother  ask  you  to  get?" 

"Oh,  a  Physiology!" 


264  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Nowadays,  our  well-organised  children's  rooms 
make  such  an  occurrence  doubtful  with  the  little 
ones,  but  apparently  there  is  much  of  it  with  adults. 

Too  much  of  our  reading — I  should  rather  say  our 
attempts  at  reading — is  of  this  character.  Such  at 
tempts  are  the  result  of  a  tendency  to  regard  the 
printed  page  as  a  fetich — to  think  that  if  one  knows 
his  alphabet  and  can  call  the  printed  words  one  after 
another  as  his  eye  runs  along  the  line,  some  unex 
plained  good  will  result,  or  at  least  that  he  has  per 
formed  a  praiseworthy  act,  has  "accumulated  merit" 
somehow  or  somewhere,  like  a  Thibetan  with  his 
prayer-wheel. 

It  is  probably  a  fact  that  if  a  man  should  meet 
you  in  the  street  and  say,  "In  beatific  repentance  lies 
jejune  responsibility,"  you  would  stare  at  him  and 
pass  him  by,  or  perhaps  flee  from  him  as  from  a  luna 
tic;  whereas  if  you  saw  these  words  printed  in  a  book 
von  might  gravely  study  them  to  ascertain  their 
mean  ing,  or  still  worse,  might  succeed  in  reading 
your  own  meaning  into  them.  The  words  I  have 
strung  together  happen  to  have  no  meaning,  but  the 
result  would  be  the  same  if  they  meant  something 
that  was  hidden  from  the  reader  by  his  inability  to 
understand  them,  no  matter  what  the  cause  of  that 
inability  might  be. 

Tin's  malady  is  doubtless  spontaneous  in  some 
degree,  and  dependent  on  failings  of  the  human  mind 
that  we  need  not  discuss  here,  but  there  are  signs 
that  it  is  being  fostered,  spread,  and  made  more  acute 
by  special  influences.  Probably  our  educational 
methods  are  not  altogether  blameless.  The  boy  who 
trustfully  approached  a  Reference  Librarian  and 
said,  "I  have  to  write  a  composition  on  what  I  saw 
between  home  and  school;  have  you  got  a  book  about 
that?"  had  doubtless  been  taught  that  he  must  look 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  265 

in  a  book  for  everything.  The  conscientious  teacher 
who  was  now  trying  to  separate  him  from  his  notion 
may  have  been  the  very  one  who,  perhaps  uncon 
sciously,  had  instilled  it;  if  so,  her  fault  had  thus 
returned  to  plague  her. 

The  boy  or  girl  who  comes  to  attach  a  sacredness 
or  a  wizardry  to  the  book  in  itself  will  naturally  be 
lieve,  after  a  little,  that  whether  he  understands 
what  is  in  it  matters  little — and  this  is  the  malady 
of  which  we  have  been  complaining. 

A  college  teacher  of  the  differential  calculus,  in 
a  time  now  happily  long  past,  when  a  pupil  timidly 
inquired  the  reason  for  this  or  that,  was  wont  to  fix 
the  interrogator  with  his  eye  and  say,  "Sir;  it  is  so 
because  the  book  says  so !''  Even  in  more  recent  days 
a  well-known  university  teacher,  accustomed  to  use 
Ids  own  text-book,  used  to  say  when  a  student  had 
ventured  to  vary  its  classic  phraseology,  "It  can  not 
be  expressed  better  than  in  the  words  of  the  book!'1 
These  instances,  of  course,  are  taken  from  the  dark 
ages  of  education,  but  even  to-day  I  believe  that  a 
false  idea  of  the  value  of  a  printed  page  merely  as 
print — not  as  the  record  of  a  mind,  ready  to  make 
contact  with  the  mind  of  a  reader — has  impressed 
itself  too  deeply  on  the  brains  of  many  children  at 
an  age  when  such  impressions  are  apt  to  be  durable. 
Not  that  the  schools  are  especially  at  fault;  we  have 
all  played  our  part  in  this  unfortunate  business.  It 
might  all  fade,  at  length;  we  all  know  that  many 
good  teachings  of  our  childhood  do  vanish ;  why 
should  not  the  bad  ones  occasionally  follow  suit? 

l>nt  now  come  in  all  the  well-meaning  instructors 
of  the  adult — the  Chautauquans,  the  educational  ex- 
tensionists,  the  lecturers,  the  correspondence  schools, 
the  advisers  of  reading,  the  makers  of  booklists,  the 
devisers  of  "courses."  They  deepen  the  fleeting  im- 


206  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

pression  and  increase  its  capacity  for  harm,  while 
varying  slightly  the  mechanism  that  produced  it.  As 
the  child  grows  into  a  man,  his  childish  idea  that 
a  book  will  produce  a  certain  effect  independently  of 
what  it  contains  is  apt  to  yield  a  little  to  reason. 
The  new  influences,  some  of  whicli  I  have  named 
above,  do  not  attempt  directly  to  combat  this  dawn 
ing  intelligence;  they  utilise  it  to  complete  the  men 
tal  discomfiture  of  their  victims.  They  admit  the 
necessity  of  comprehending  the  contents  of  the  book, 
but  they  persuade  the  reader  that  such  comprehen 
sion  is  easier  than  it  really  is.  And  they  often  ad 
minister  specially  concocted  tabloids  that  convince 
one  that  he  knows  more  than  he  really  does.  Thus 
the  unsuspecting  adult  goes  on  reading  what  he  does 
not  understand,  not  now  thinking  that  it  does  not 
matter,  but  falsely  persuaded  that  he  has  become 
competent  to  understand. 

Every  one  of  the  agencies  that  I  have  named  aims 
to  do  good  educational  work;  every  one  is  competent 
to  do  such  work;  nearly  every  one  does  much  of  it. 
I  am  finding  fault  with  them  only  so  far  as  they  suc 
ceed  in  persuading  readers  that  they  are  better  edu 
cated  than  they  really  are.  In  this  respect  such 
agencies  are  precisely  on  a  par  with  the  proprietary 
medicine  that  is  an  excellent  laxative  or  sudorific,  but 
is  offered  also  as  a  cure  for  tuberculosis  or  cancer. 

I  once  heard  the  honoured  head  of  a  famous  body 
that  does  an  enormous  amount  of  work  of  this  sort 
deliver  an  apologia,  deserving  of  all  attention,  in 
which  he  complained  that  his  institution  had  been 
falsely  accused  of  superficiality.  It  was,  he  said, 
perfectly  honest  in  what  it  taught.  If  its  pupils 
thought  that  the  elementary  knowledge  they  were 
gaining  was  comprehensive  and  thorough,  that  was 
their  fault — not  his.  And  yet,  at  that  moment,  the 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING  2G7 

0 

institution  was  posing  before  its  pupils  as  a  "univer 
sity"  and  using  the  forms  and  nomenclature  of  such 
a  body  to  strengthen  the  idea  in  their  minds.  We 
cannot  acquit  it,  or  any  of  the  agencies  like  it,  of 
complicity  in  the  causation  of  the  malady  whose 
symptoms  we  are  discussing. 

It  is  not  the  fault  of  the  women's  clubs  that  they 
have  fallen  into  line  in  such  an  imposing  procession 
as  this.  Their  formation  and  work  constitute  one  of 
the  most  interesting  and  important  manifestations 
of  the  present  feminist  movement.  Their  role  in  it 
is  partly  social,  partly  educational;  and  as  they  con 
sist  of  adults,  elementary  education  is  of  course  ex 
cluded  from  their  programme.  We  therefore  find 
them  committed,  perhaps  unconsciously,  to  the  plan 
of  required  or  recommended  reading,  in  a  form  that 
has  long  been  the  bane  of  our  educational  systems 
both  in  school  and  out. 

One  of  the  corner-stones  of  this  system  is  the  idea 
that  the  acquisition  of  information  is  valuable  in 
itself,  no  matter  what  may  be  the  relationship  be 
tween  it  and  the  acquiring  mind,  or  what  use  of  it 
may  be  made  in  the  future.  According  to  this  idea, 
if  a  woman  can  once  get  into  her  head  that  the  Medici 
were  a  family  and  not  "a  race  of  people,"  it  matters 
little  that  she  is  unfitted  to  comprehend  why  they  are 
worth  reading  about  at  all,  or  that  the  fact  has  noth 
ing  to  do  with  what  she  has  ever  done  or  is  likely  to 
be  called  upon  to  do  in  the  future. 

That  the  members  of  these  clubs  are  willing  to 
pursue  knowledge  under  these  hampering  conditions 
is  of  course  a  point  in  their  favour,  so  far  as  it  goes. 
A  desire  for  knowledge  is  never  to  be  despised,  even 
when  it  is  not  entertained  for  its  own  sake.  And  a 
secondary  desire  may  often  be  changed  into  a  pri 
mary  one,  if  the  task  is  approached  in  the  right  way. 


268  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

» 

The  possibility  of  such  a  transformation  is  a  hopeful 
feature  of  the  present  situation. 

The  reading  that  is  done  by  women  in  connection 
with  club  work  is  of  several  different  types.  In  the 
simplest  organisations,  whirh  are  reading  clubs  pure 
and  simple,  a  group  of  books,  roughly  equal  in  num 
ber  to  the  membership,  is  taken  and  passed  around 
until  each  person  has  read  them  all.  There  is  no  con 
nection  between  them,  and  each  volume  is  selected 
simply  on  some  one's  statement  that  it  is  a  "good 
book."  A  step  higher  is  the  club  where  the  books 
are  on  one  general  subject,  selected  by  some  one  who 
has  been  asked  to  prescribe  a  "course  of  reading." 
By  easy  gradations  we  arrive  at  the  final  stage,  where 
the  reading  is  of  the  nature  of  investigation  and  its 
outcome  is  an  essay.  A  subject  is  decided  on  at  the 
beginning  of  the  season.  The  programme  committee 
selects  several  phases  of  it  and  assigns  each  to  a 
member,  who  prepares  her  essay  and  reads  it  to  the 
club  at  one  of  the  stated  meetings.  In  this  case  the 
reading  to  be  done  in  preparation  for  writing  the 
essay  may  or  may  not  be  guided  by  the  committee. 
In  many  cases,  where  the  local  public  library  co 
operates  actively  with  the  clubs,  a  list  may  be  made 
out  by  the  librarian  and  perhaps  printed,  with  due 
acknowledgment,  in  the  club's  year  book.  No  one  can 
doubt,  in  looking  over  typical  programmes  and  lists 
among  the  thousands  that  represent  the  animal  read 
ing  of  the  women's  clubs  throughout  the  United 
States,  that  a  serious  and  sustained  effort  is  being 
made  to  introduce  the  intellect,  as  an  active  factor, 
into  the  lives  of  thousands  of  women — lives  where 
hitherto  it  has  played  little  part,  whether  they  are 
millionaires  or  nearpaupers,  workers  or  idlers. 
With  this  aim  there  must  be  full  measure  of  sym 
pathy,  but  I  fear  we  can  commend  it  only  in  the  back- 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  269 

handed  fashion  in  which  a  great  authority  on  sociol 
ogy  recently  commended  the  Socialists.  "If  sym 
pathy  with  what  they  are  trying  to  do,  as  opposed  to 
the  way  in  which  they  are  trying  to  do  it,  makes  one 
a  Socialist/7  said  the  Professor,  "then  I  am  a  Socia 
list.''  Here  also  we  may  sympathise  with  the  aim, 
bnt  the  results  are  largely  dependent  on  the  method  ; 
and  that  method  is  the  offspring  of  ignorance  and  in 
efficiency.  The  results  may  be  summed  up  in  one 
word — superficiality.  I  have  elsewhere  warned 
readers  not  to  think  that  this  word  means  simply  a 
slight  knowledge  of  a  subject.  A  slight  knowledge 
is  all  that  most  of  us  possess,  or  need  to  possess, 
about  most  subjects.  I  know  a  little  about  Monte 
negro  for  instance — something  of  its  origin  and  re 
lationships,  its  topography,  the  names  and  charac 
teristics  of  a  city  or  two,  the  racial  and  other  pecu 
liarities  of  its  inhabitants.  Yet  I  should  cut  a  poor 
figure  indeed  in  an  examination  on  Montenegrin  his 
tory,  geography  or  government.  Is  my  knowledge 
"superficial"?  It  could  not  properly  be  so  stig 
matised  unless  I.  should  pose  as  an  authority  on 
Montenegro,  or  unless  my  opportunities  to  know 
about  the  country  had  been  so  great  that  failure  to 
take  advantage  of  them  should  argue  mental  inca 
pacity.  The  trouble  with  the  reading-lists  and  pro 
grammes  of  our  women's  clubs,  inherited  in  some 
degree  from  our  general  educational  methods,  is  that 
they  emphasise  their  own  content  and  ignore  what 
they  do  not  contain,  to  such  an  extent  that  those  who 
use  them  remain  largely  in  ignorance  of  the  fact  that 
the  former  bears  a  very  small  proportion  indeed  to 
the  latter. 

It  was  once  my  duty  to  act  as  private  tutor  in  alge 
bra  and  geometry  to  a  young  man  preparing  for  col 
lege.  He  was  bright  and  industrious,  but  I  found 


270  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

that  lie  was  under  the  impression  that  when  he  had 
gone  to  the  end  of  his  text-books  in  those  two  sub 
jects  he  would  have  mastered,  not  only  all  the  alge 
bra  and  geometry,  but  all  the  mathematics,  that  the 
world  held  in  store.  And  when  this  story  has  been 
told  in  despair  to  some  very  intelligent  persons  they 
have  commented:  "Well,  there  isn't  much  more,  is 
there?" 

The  effort  of  the  text-book  writer,  as  well  as  that 
of  the  maker  of  programmes,  lists,  and  courses,  ap 
pears  to  have  been  to  produce  what  he  calls  a  "well- 
rounded"  effect;  in  other  words,  to  make  the  student 
think  that  the  whole  subject — in  condensed  form  per 
haps,  but  still  the  whole — lies  within  what  he  has 
turned  out.  Did  you  ever  see  a  chemistry  that  gave, 
or  tried  to  give,  an  idea  of  the  world  of  chemical 
knowledge  that  environs  its  board  cover?  One  has 
to  become  a  Newton  before  he  feels,  with  that  sage. 
like  a  child,  playing  on  the  sands,  with  the  great, 
unexplored  ocean  of  knowledge  stretching  out  before 
him.  Most  students  are  rather  like  ducks  in  a  barn 
yard  puddle,  quite  sure  that  they  are  familiar  with 
the  whole  world  and  serene  in  that  knowledge. 

Most  writers  of  text-books  would  indignantly 
deny  that  this  criticism  implies  a  fault.  It  is  none 
of  their  business,  they  would  say,  to  call  attention  to 
what  is  beyond  their  scope.  So  be  it.  Unfortunately, 
every  one  feels  in  the  same  way  and  so  the  horizon  of 
our  women's  clubs  is  that  of  the  puddle  instead  of 
the  ocean. 

It  is  a  most  interesting  fact  in  this  connection 
that  there  exist  certain  organisations  which  make  a 
business  of  furnishing  clubwomen  with  information 
for  their  papers.  I  have  heard  this  service  described 
as  a  "godsend,"  to  clubs  in  small  places  where  there 
are  no  libraries,  or  where  the  libraries  are  poorly 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  271 

equipped  with  books  and  personnel.  But,  if  I  am 
correctly  informed,  the  service  does  not  stop  with  the 
supply  of  raw  material;  it  goes  on  to  the  finished 
product,  and  the  perplexed  lady  who  is  required  to 
read  a  paper  on  "Melchisedek"  or  on  "Popular  Er 
rors  Regarding  the  Theory  of  Groups/'  may  for  an 
adequate  fee,  or  possibly  even  for  an  inadequate  one, 
obtain  a  neatly  typewritten  manuscript  on  the  sub 
ject,  ready  to  read. 

This  sort  of  thing  is  not  at  all  to  be  wondered  at, 
It  has  gone  on  since  the  dawn  of  time  with  college 
theses,  clergymen's  sermons,  the  orations  and  official 
papers  of  statesmen.  Whenever  a  man  is  confronted 
with  an  intellectual  task  that  he  dare  not  shirk,  and 
yet  has  not  the  intellect  or  the  interest  to  perform, 
the  first  thing  he  thinks  of  is  to  hire  some  one  to  do 
it  for  him,  and  this  demand  has  always  been  great 
enough  and  widespread  enough  to  make  it  profitable 
for  some  one  to  organise  the  supply  on  a  commercial 
basis.  What  interests  us  in  the  present  case  is  the 
fact  that  its  existence  in  the  woman's  club  affords 
an  instant  clue  to  the  state  of  mind  of  many  of  its 
members.  They  have  this  in  common  with  the 
plagiarising  pupil,  clergyman,  or  statesman — they 
are  called  upon  to  do  something  in  which  they  have 
only  a  secondary  interest.  The  minister  who  reads 
a  sermon  on  the  text  "Thou  Shalt  Not  Steal,"  and 
considers  that  the  fact  that  he  has  paid  five  dollars 
for  it  will  absolve  him  from  the  charge  of  inconsis 
tency,  does  not — cannot — feel  any  desire  to  impress 
his  congregation  with  a  desire  for  right  living — he 
wants  only  to  hold  his  job.  The  university  student 
who,  after  ascertaining  that  there  is  no  copyable  lit 
erature  in  the  Library  on  "Why  I  Came  to  College," 
pays  a  classmate  a  dollar  to  give  this  information  to 
the  Faculty,  cares  nothing  about  the  question;  but  he 


272  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

does  care  to  avoid  discipline.  So  the  clubwoman  who 
reads  a  purchased  essay  on  "Ireland  in  the  Four 
teenth  Century/'  has  not  the  slightest  interest  in  the 
subject;  but  she  does  want  to  remain  a  member  of 
her  club,  in  good  and  regular  standing.  It  is  the 
same  substitution  of  adventitious  for  natural  motives 
and  stimuli  that  works  intellectual  havoc  from  the 
mother's  knee  up  to  the  Halls  of  Congress. 

When  I  assert  boldly  that  at  the  present  time  the 
majority  of  vague  and  illogical  readers  are  women, 
and  that  women's  clubs  are  responsible  for  much  of 
that  kind  of  reading,  I  shall  doubtless  incur  the  dis 
pleasure  of  the  school  of  feminists  who  seem  bent  on 
minimising  the  differences  between  the  two  sexes. 
Obvious  physical  differences  they  have  not  been  able 
to  explain  away,  and  to  deny  that  corresponding 
mental  differences  exist  is  to  shut  one's  eyes  to  all  the 
teachings  of  modern  physiology.  The  mental  life  is 
a  function,  not  of  the  brain  alone,  but  of  the  whole 
nervous  system  of  which. the  brain  is  but  the  principal 
ganglion.  Cut  off  a  man's  legs,  and  you  have  removed 
something  from  his  mental,  as  well  as  from  his  physi 
cal  equipment.  That  men  and  women  should  have 
minds  of  the  same  type  is  a  physiological  impossibil 
ity.  A  familiar  way  of  stating  the  difference  is  to  say 
that  in  the  man's  mind  reason  predominates,  in  the 
woman's,  intuition.  There  is  doubtless  something  to 
be  said  for  this  statement  of  the  distinction,  but  it  is 
objectionable  because  it  is  generally  interpreted  to 
mean — quite  unnecessarily — that  a  woman's  mind  is 
inferior  to  a  man's — a  distinction  about  as  foolish  as 
it  would  be  to  say  the  negative  electricity  is  inferior 
to  positive,  or  cold  to  heat.  The  types  are  in  most 
ways  supplementary,  and  a  combination  of  the  two 
lias  always  been  a  potent  intellectual  force — one  of 
the  strongest  arguments  for  marriage  as  an  institu- 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING  273 

tion.  When  we  try  to  do  the  work  of  the  world  with 
either  type  alone  we  have  generally  made  a  mess  of  it. 
And  the  outcome  seems  to  make  it  probable  that  the 
female  type  is  especially  prone  to  become  the  prey  of 
fallacies  like  that  which  has  brought  about  the  pres 
ent  flood  of  useless,  or  worse  than  useless,  reading. 

I  shall  doubtless  be  asked  whether  I  assert  that 
one  type  of  mind  belongs  always  to  the  man  and  one 
to  the  woman.  By  no  means.  I  do  not  even  lay  em 
phasis  on  the  necessity  of  naming  the  two  types 
"male"  and  "female."  All  I  say  is  that  the  types  ex 
ist — with  those  intermediate  cases  that  always  bother 
the  classifier — and  that  the  great  majority  of  men 
possess  one  type  and  the  great  majority  of  women  the 
other.  It  is  possible  that  differences  of  training  may 
have  originated  or  at  least  emphasised  the  types;  it  is 
possible  that  future  training  may  obliterate  the  lines 
that  separate  them,  but  I  do  not  believe  it.  I  am  even 
afraid  of  trying  the  experiment,  for  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  its  success  in  the  mental  field  might  re 
act  unfavourably  on  those  physical  differences  on 
which  the  future  of  the  race  depends.  We  may  have 
gone  too  far  in  this  direction  already;  else  why  the 
feverish  anxiety  of  the  girls'  colleges  to  prove  that 
their  graduates  are  marrying  and  bearing  children? 

The  fact  is  that  the  problem  of  the  education  of 
the  sexes  is  not  yet  solved.  Educating  one  sex  alone 
didn't  work;  neither,  I  believe,  does  the  present  plan 
of  educating  both  alike,  whether  in  the  same  institu 
tion,  or  separately. 

II — A  Diagnosis 

Reading,  like  conversation,  is,  or  ought  to  be,  a 
contact  between  two  minds.  The  difference  is  that 
while  one  may  talk  only  with  his  contemporaries  and 


274  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF" 

neighbours  one  may  read  the  words  of  a  writer  far 
distant  both  in  time  and  space.  It  is  no  wonder,  per 
haps,  that  the  printed  word  has  become  a  fetish,  but 
fetishes  of  any  kind  are  not  in  accordance  with  the 
spirit  of  the  age,  and  their  veneration  should  be  dis 
couraged.  Beading  in  which  the  contact  of  minds  is 
of  secondary  importance,  or  even  cuts  no  figure  at  all, 
is  meaningless  and  valueless. 

In  a  previous  paper,  reasons  have  been  given  for 
believing  that  reading  of  this  kind  is  peculiarly  prev 
alent  among  the  members  of  women's  clubs.  The 
value  of  these  organisations  is  so  great,  and  the  ser 
vices  that  they  have  rendered  to  women,  and  through 
them  to  the  general  cause  of  social  betterment,  are  so 
evident,  that  it  seems  well  worth  while  to  examine 
the  matter  a  little  more  closely,  and  to  complete  a 
diagnosis  based  on  the  study  of  the  symptoms  that 
have  already  presented  themselves.  As  most  of  the 
reading  done  in  connection  with  clubs  is  in  prepara 
tion  for  the  writing  and  reading  of  papers,  we  may 
profitably,  perhaps,  direct  our  attention  to  this  phase 
of  the  subject. 

Most  persons  will  agree,  probably,  that  the  aver 
age  club  paper  is  not  notably  worth  while.  It  is 
written  by  a  person  not  primarily  and  vitally  inter 
ested  in  the  subject,  and  it  is  read  to  an  assemblage 
most  of  whom  are  similarly  devoid  of  interest — the 
whole  proceeding  being  more  or  less  perfunctory. 
Could  it  be  expected  that  reading  done  in  connection 
with  such  a  performance  should  be  valuable? 

This  is  worth  pondering,  because  it  is  a  fact  that 
almost  all  the  vital  informative  literature  that  is  pro 
duced  at  first  hand  sees  the  light  in  connection  with 
clubs  and  associations — bodies  that  publish  journals, 
"transactions"  or  "proceedings''  for  the  especial  pur 
pose  of  printing  the  productions  of  their  members. 


CLUBWOMEN'S    KEA I  >  LX( i 

This  literature,  for  the  most  part,  does  not  come 
to  the  notice  of  the  general  reader.  The  ordinary 
books  on  the  technical  subjects  of  which  it  treats  are 
not  raw  material,  but  a  manufactured  product — com 
pilations  from  the  original  sources.  And  the  pity  of 
it  is  that  very  many  of  them,  often  the  best  of  them 
from  a  purely  literary  point  of  view,  are  so  unsatis 
factory,  viewed  from  the  point  of  view  of  accomplish 
ment.  They  do  not  do  what  they  set  out  to  do;  they 
are  full  of  misunderstandings,  misinterpretations,  in 
terpolations  and  omissions.  It  is  the  old  story ;  those 
who  know  won't  tell  and  the  task  is  assumed  by  those 
who  are  eminently  able  to  tell,  but  don't  know.  The 
scientific  expert  despises  the  public,  which  is  forced 
to  get  its  information  through  glib  but  ignorant  ex 
pounders.  This  is  a  digression,  but  it  may  serve  to 
illuminate  the  situation,  which  is  that  the  authorita 
tive  literature  of  special  subjects  sees  the  light  almost 
wholly  in  the  form  of  papers,  read  before  clubs  and 
associations.  Evidently  there  is  nothing  in  the  mere 
fact  that  a  paper  is  to  be  read  before  a  club,  to  make 
it  trivial  or  valueless.  Yet  how  much  that  is  of  value 
to  the  world  first  saw  the  light  in  a  paper  read  before 
a  woman's  club?  How  much  original  thought,  how 
much  discovery,  how  much  invention,  how  much  in 
spiration,  is  put  into  their  writing  and  emanates  from 
their  reading? 

There  must  be  a  fundamental  difference  of  some 
kind  between  the  constitution  and  the  methods  of 
these  two  kinds  of  clubs.  A  study  of  this  difference 
will  throw  light  on  the  kind  of  reading  that  must  be 
done  in  connection  with  each  and  may  explain,  in 
great  part,  why  the  reading  done  for  women's  club- 
papers  is  what  it  is. 

A  scientific  or  technical  society  exists  largely  for 
the  purpose  of  informing  its  members  of  the  original 


•27  i\  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

work  that  is  being  done  by  each  of  them.  When  any 
one  has  accomplished  such  work  or  has  made  such 
progress  that  he  thinks  an  account  of  what  he  has 
done  would  be  interesting,  he  sends  a  description  of 
it  to  the  proper  committee,  which  decides  whether  it 
shall  be  read  and  discussed  at  a  meeting,  or  published 
in  the  Proceedings,  or  both,  or  neither.  The  result 
depends  on  the  size  of  the  membership,  on  its  activity, 
and  on  the  value  of  its  work.  It  may  be  that  the  pro 
gramme  committee  has  an  embarrassment  of  riches 
from  which  to  select,  or  that  there  is  poverty  instead. 
But  in  no  case  does  it  arrange  a  programme.  The 
Physical  Society,  if  that  is  its  name  and  subject,  does 
not  decide  that  it  will  devote  the  meetings  of  the  cur 
rent  season  to  a  consideration  of  Radio-activity  and 
assign  to  specified  members  the  reading  of  papers  on 
Radio-active  springs,  the  character  of  Radium  Eman 
ation,  and  so  on.  If  it  did,  it  would  doubtless  get  pre 
cisely  the  same  results  that  we  are  complaining  of  in 
the  case  of  the  Woman's  Club.  A  man  whose  special 
ty  is  thermodynamics  might  be  told  off  to  prepare  a 
paper  on  Radio-active  Elements  in  Rocks — a  subject 
in  which  he  is  not  interested.  He  could  have  nothing 
new  nor  original  to  say  on  the  subject  and  his  paper 
would  be  a  mere  compilation.  It  would  not  even  be  a 
good  compilation,  for  his  interest  and  his  skill  would 
lie  wholly  in  another  direction.  The  good  results 
that  the  society  does  get  are  wholly  dependent  on  the 
fact  that  each  writer  is  full  of  new  information  that 
he  desires,  above  all  things,  to  communicate  to  his 
fellow-members. 

In  the  preparation  of  such  a  paper,  one  needs,  of 
course,  to  read,  and  often  to  read  widely.  Much  of 
the  reading  will  be  done  in  connection  with  the  work 
described,  or  even  before  it  is  begun.  No  one  wishes 
to  undertake  an  investigation  that  has  already  been 
made  by  someone  else,  and  so  the  first  thing  that  a 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING 

competent  investigator  does  is  to  survey  his  field  and 
ascertain  what  others  have  accomplished  in  it.  This 
task  is  by  no  means  easy,  for  such  information  is 
often  hidden  in  journals  and  transactions  that  are 
difficult  to  reach,  and  the  published  indexes  of  such 
material,  though  wonderfully  advanced  on  the  road 
toward  perfection  in  the  past  twenty  years,  have  yet 
far  to  travel  before  they  reach  it.  Not  only  the 
writer's  description  of  vwhat  he  has  done  or  ascer 
tained,  but  the  character  of  the  work  itself ;  the  direc 
tion  it  takes — the  inferences  that  he  draws  from  it, 
will  be  controlled  and  coloured  by  what  he  reads  of 
others'  work.  And  even  if  he  finds  it  easy  to  ascer 
tain  what  has  been  done  and  to  get  at  the  published 
accounts  and  discussions  of  it,  the  mass  may  be  so 
great  that  he  has  laid  out  for  him  a  course  of  reading 
that  may  last  many  months. 

But  mark  the  spirit  with  which  lie  attacks  it !  He 
is  at  work  on  something  that  seems  to  him  supremely 
worth  while.  He  is  labouring  to  find  out  truth,  to 
dissipate  error,  to  help  his  fellow-men  to  know  some 
thing  or  to  do  something.  The  impulse  to  read,  and 
to  read  much  and  thoroughly,  is  so  powerful  that  it 
may  even  need  judicious  repression.  The  difference 
between  tliis  kind  of  reading  and  that  done  in  the 
preparation  of  a  paper  to  fill  a  place  in  a  set  pro 
gramme  hardly  needs  emphasis. 

The  preparation  of  papers  for  professional  and 
technical  societies  has  been  dwelt  upon  at  such 
length,  because  I  see  no  reason  why  the  impulse  to 
reading  that  it  furnishes  cannot  also  be  placed  at  the 
disposal  of  the  woman's  club;  and  I  shall  have  some 
suggestions  toward  this  end  in  a  future  article. 

Meanwhile,  I  shall  doubtless  be  told  that  it  is  un 
fair  to  compare  the  woman's  club,  with  its  didactic 
aim,  and  the  scientific  association  of  trained  and  in- 


278  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

terested  investigators.  It  is  true  that  we  have  plenty 
of  clubs — some  of  men  alone,  some  of  both  sexes — 
whose  object  is  to  listen  to  interesting  and  instructive 
papers  on  a  set  subject,  often  forming  part  of  a  pro- 
arranged  programme.  These,  however,  need  our  at 
tention  here  only  so  far  as  the  papers  are  prepared  by 
members  of  the  club,  and  in  this  case  the}7  are  in  pre 
cisely  the  same  class  as  the  woman's  club.  In  many 
cases,  however,  the  paper  is  merely  the  excuse  for  a 
social  gathering,  perhaps  at  a  dinner  or  a  luncheon. 
Of  course  if  the  paper  or  lecture  is  by  an  expert  in 
vited  to  give  it,  the  case  falls  altogether  outside  of 
the  region  that  we  are  exploring. 

I  am  condemning  here  all  clubs,  formed  for  an 
avowed  educational  or  cultural  purpose,  that  adopt 
set  programmes  and  assign  the  subjects  to  their  own 
members.  I  am  deploring  the  kind  of  reading  to 
which  this  leads,  the  kind  of  papers  that  are  prepared 
in  this  way,  and  the  kind  of  thought  and  action  that 
are  the  inevitable  outcome. 

It  would  seem  that  the  women's  clubs  now  form 
an  immense  majority  of  all  organisations  of  this  kind 
and  that  there  are  reasons  for  warning  women  that 
they  are  specially  prone  to  this  kind  of  mistake. 

The  diversity  of  interests  of  the  average  man,  the 
wideness  of  his  contacts — the  whole  tradition  of  his 
sex — tends  to  minimise  the  injury  that  may  be  done 
to  him,  intellectually  and  spiritually,  by  anything  of 
this  kind.  The  very  fact  that  he  is  the  woman's  in 
ferior  spiritually,  and  in  many  cases,  in  intellect,  also 
—although  probably  not  at  the  maximum — relieves 
him,  in  great  part,  of  the  odium  attaching  to  the  error 
that  has  been  described.  Women  are  becoming 
keenly  alive  to  the  deficiencies  of  their  sex-tradition ; 
they  are  trying  to  broaden  their  intellectual  contacts 
— that  is  the  great  modern  feminist  movement.  Some 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  279 

of  those  who  are  active  in  it  are  making  two  mistakes 
—they  are  ignoring  the  differences  between  the  sexes 
and  they  are  trying  to  substitute  revolution  for  evolu 
tion.  In  this  latter  error  they  are  in  very  good  com 
pany — hardly  one  of  the  great  and  the  good  has  not 
made  it,  at  some  time  and  in  some  way.  Revolution 
is  always  the  outcome  of  a  mistake.  The  mistake  may 
be  antecedent  and  irrevocable,  and  the  revolution 
therefore  necessary,  but  this  is  rarely  the  case.  The 
revolutionist  runs  a  risk  common  to  all  who  are  in  a 
hurry — he  may  break  the  object  of  his  attention  in 
stead  of  moving  it.  When  he  wants  to  hand  you  a 
dish  he  hits  it  with  a  ball-bat.  Taking  a  reasonable 
amount  of  time  is  better  in  the  long  run. 

That  there  is  no  royal  road  to  knowledge  has  long 
been  recognised.  The  trouble  with  most  of  us  is  that 
we  have  interpreted  this  to  mean  that  the  acquisition 
of  knowledge  must  always  be  a  distasteful  process. 
On  the  contrary,  the  vivid  interest  that  is  the  surest 
guide  to  knowledge  is  also  the  surest  smoother  of  the 
path.  Given  the  interest  that  lures  the  student  on, 
and  he  will  spend  years  in  surmounting  rocks  and 
breaking  through  thorny  jungles,  realising  their  dif 
ficulties  perhaps,  but  rejoicing  the  more  when  those 
difficulties  prove  no  obstacles. 

The  fact  that  the  first  step  toward  accomplish 
ment  is  to  create  an  interest  has  long  been  recognised, 
but  attempts  have  been  made  too  often  to  do  it  by 
devious  ways,  unrelated  to  the  matter  in  hand.  Stu 
dents  have  been  made  to  study  history  or  algebra  by 
offering  prizes  to  the  diligent  and  by  threatening  the 
slothful  with  punishment.  More  indirect  rewards 
and  punishments  abound  in  all  our  incitements  to 
effort  and  need  not  be  mentioned  here.  They  may 
often  be  effective,  but  the  further  removed  they  are 
from  direct  personal  interest  in  the  subject,  the 


280  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

weaker  and  the  less  permanent  is  the  result.  You 
may  offer  a  boy  a  dollar  to  learn  certain  facts  in  Eng 
lish  history,  but  those  facts  will  not  be  fixed  so  well 
or  so  lastingly  in  his  mind  as  those  connected  with 
his  last  year's  trip  to  California,  which  he  remem 
bers  easily  without  offer  of  reward  or  threat  of  pun 
ishment. 

The  interest  in  the  facts  gathered  by  reading  in 
connection  with  the  average  club  paper  is  merely  the 
result  of  a  desire  to  remain  in  good  standing  by  ful 
filling  the  duties  of  membership;  and  these  duties 
may  be  fulfilled  with  slight  effort  and  no  direct  inter 
est,  as  we  have  already  seen. 

If  interest  were  present  even  at  the  inception  of 
the  programme,  something  would  be  gained;  but  in 
too  many  cases  it  is  not.  The  programme  committee 
must  make  some  kind  of  a  programme,  but  what  it  is 
to  be  they  know  little  and  care  less. 

Two  women  recently  entered  a  branch  library  and 
asked  the  librarian,  who  was  busy  charging  books  at 
the  desk,  what  two  American  dramatists  she  consid 
ered  "foremost."  This  was  followed  by  the  request, 
"Please  tell  me  the  two  best  plays  of  each  of  them/' 
A  few  minutes  later  the  querists  returned  and  askod 
the  same  question  about  English  dramatists,  and  still 
later  about  German,  Russian,  Italian  and  Spanish 
writers  of  the  drama.  Each  time  they  eagerly  wrote 
down  the  information  and  then  retired  to  the  read 
ing-room  for  a  few  minutes'  consultation. 

Finally  they  propounded  a  question  that  was  be 
yond  the  librarian's  knowledge,  and  then  she  asked 
why  thoy  wanted  to  know. 

"We  are  making  out  the  programme  for  our  next 
year's  study  course  in  the  Blank  Club,"  was  the  an 
swer. 

"But  yon  mustn't  tnke  my  opinion  as  final,"  pro- 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  281 

tested  the  scandalised  librarian.  "You  ought  to  read 
up  everything  you  can  find  about  dramatists.  I  may 
have  left  out  the  most  important  ones." 

"This  will  do  nicely,"  said  the  club-woman,  as  she 
folded  her  sheets  of  paper.  And  it  did — whether 
nicely  or  not  deponent  saith  not ;  but  it  certainly  con 
stituted  the  club  programme. 

On  another  occasion  a  clubwoman  entered  the  li 
brary  and  said  with  an  air  of  importance,  "I  want 
your  material  on  Susanna  H.  Brown." 

The  librarian  had  never  heard  of  Susanna,  but 
experience  had  taught  her  modesty  and  also  a  certain 
degree  of  guile,  so  she  merely  said,  "What  do  you 
want  to  know  about  her,  particularly?" 

"Our  club  wishes  to  discuss  her  contributions  to 
American  literature." 

Now  the  Brown  family  has  been  active  in  letters, 
from  Charles  Brockden  down  to  Alice,  but  no  one 
seems  to  know  of  Susanna  II.  The  librarian  con 
trived  to  put  off  the  matter  until  she  could  make  some 
investigations  of  her  own,  but,  all  the  resources  of 
the  central  reference  room  proving  unequal  to  the 
task,  she  timidly  asked  the  clubwoman,  at  her  next 
visit,  to  solve  the  problem. 

"Oh,  we  don't  know  who  Susanna  H.  Brown  was ; 
that  is  why  we  came  to  you  for  information !" 

"But  where  did  you  find  the  name?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know  exactly;  but  one  of  our  mem 
bers,  in  a  conversation  with  some  one  who  knows  a 
lot  about  literature — I  forget  just  who  it  was — was 
told  that  Susanna  H.  Brown  had  rendered  note 
worthy  services  to  American  literature.  We've  got  to 
find  out,  for  her  name  is  already  printed  on  the  pro 
gramme!" 

I  don't  know  what  was  said  of  Miss,  or  Mrs. 
Brown  at  the  meeting;  but  my  opinion  is  that  this 
particular  item  on  the  programme  had  to  be  omitted. 


LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Another  lady  entered  a  library  abruptly  and  said, 
"I  want  your  books  on  China." 

"Do  you  mean  the  country  of  that  name?  or  are 
you  looking  up  porcelain?" 

First  perplexity  and  then  dismay  spread  over  the 
lady's  face.  "Why,  I  don't  know,"  she  faltered.  "The 
program  just  said  China !" 

A  university  "professor  was  once  asked  by  one  of 
these  program  committees  for  a  list  of  references 
on  German  folklore — a  subject  to  which  it  had  de 
cided  that  its  club  should  devote  the  current  season. 
The  list,  as  furnished,  proved  rather  stilt',  and  the 
astonished  professor  received  forthwith  the  following 
epistle  (quoted  from  memory)  : 
"DEAR  PROFESSOR— 

Thank  you  so  much  for  the  folk-lore;  but  we  have 
changed  our  minds  and  have  decided  to  study  the 
Chicago  Drainage  Canal  instead." 

This  hap-hazard  method  of  programme-making  is 
not  confined  to  club  papers,  as  the  following  anecdote 
will  show: 

An  officer  of  a  woman's  club  entered  a  library  and 
said  that  she  thought  it  would  be  nice  to  vary  the 
usual  literary  programme  by  the  introduction  of 
story-telling,  and  she  asked  for  aid  from  the  library 
staff.  It  was  a  busy  season  and  as  the  librarian  hes 
itated  the  clubwoman  added  hastily  that  the  whole 
programme  need  not  occupy  more  than  half  an  hour. 
"We  want  the  very  simplest  things,  told  in  a  few- 
words,  so  that  it  will  really  be  no  trouble  at  all." 

Pressed  to  be  more  specific,  she  went  on  :  "Well- 
no  story  must  take  more  than  three  minutes,  and  we 
want  Little  Nell,  Louis  IX,  Moses  in  the  Bulrushes, 
the  Princes  in  the  Tower,  Cinderella,  Jack  and  the 
Bean  Stalk,  the  Holy  Night  and  Louis  XL 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING  283 

"You  see  that  allowing  three  minutes  apiece 
would  bring  them  all  within  twenty -four  minutes- 
less  than  half  an  hour,  just  as  I  said. 

"And — oh,  yes !  we  want  the  storyteller  to  sit  on  a 
platform,  and  just  in  front  of  her  we  will  pose  a 
group  of  little  girls,  all  in  white  frocks.  Won't  that 
be  nice?" 

The  making  of  programmes  has  in  many  cases 
been  influenced  by  the  fact  that  some  subjects  are 
considered  more  "high-toned"  than  others.  The  drama 
is  at  present  a  particularly  high-toned  subject.  The 
fine  arts  are  always  placed  in  the  first  class.  Ap 
parently  anything  closely  related  to  the  personal 
lives,  habits  and  interests  of  those  concerned  is  under 
a  ban.  The  fine  arts,  for  instance,  are  not  recognised 
as  including  the  patterns  of  wall-paper  or  curtains,  or 
the  decoration  of  plates  or  cups.  Copying  from  one 
programme  to  another  is  a  common  expedient.  The 
making  of  these  programmes  betrays,  all  through  its 
processes  and  their  inevitable  result,  lack  of  original 
ity,  blind  adherence  to  models,  unquestioning  imita 
tion  of  something  that  has  gone  before.  I  do  not  be 
lieve  these  to  be  sex-characteristics,  and  there  are 
signs  that  the  sex  is  growing  out  of  them.  If  they  are 
not  sex  characteristics  they  must  be  the  results  of  ed 
ucation,  for  ordinary  heredity  would  quickly  equalise 
the  sexes  in  this  respect.  I  have  already  stated  my 
belief  that  the  physical  differences  between  the  sexes 
are  necessarily  accompanied  by  mental  differences, 
and  I  think  it  probable  that  the  characteristics  noted 
above,  although  not  proper  to  sex,  spring  from  the 
fact  that  we  are  expecting  like  results  from  the  same 
educational  treatment  of  unlike  minds.  When  we 
have  learned  how  to  vary  our  treatment  of  these 
minds  so  as  to  produce  like  results — in  those  cases 


284  LIBBABIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

where  we  want  the  results  to  be  alike,  as  in  the  pres 
ent  instance — we  shall  have  solved  the  problem  of  ed 
ucation,  so  far  as  it  affects  sex-differences. 

It  has  long  been  recognised  that  whenever  woman 
does  show  a  deviation  from  standards  she  is  apt  to 
deviate  far  and  erratically.  So  far,  however,  she  has 
shown  no  marked  tendency  so  to  deviate  in  the  arts 
and  a  very  slight  one  in  the  sciences.  There  have 
been  lately  some  marked  instances  of  her  upward  dev 
iation  in  the  field  of  science.  In  literature,  no  age 
has  been  wanting  in  great  woman  writers,  though 
there  have  been  few  of  them.  I  look  eventually  to*see 
woman  physicists  as  eminent  as  Helmholtz  and  Kel 
vin,  woman  painters  as  great  as  Eaphael  and  Velas 
quez,  woman  musicians  as  able  as  Bach  and 
Beethoven.  That  we  have  had  none  yet  I  believe  to  be 
solely  the  fault  of  inadequate  education.  Of  this  in 
adequacy  our  imitative,  arbitrary  and  uninspiring 
club  programmes  are  a  part — the  very  fact  that  our 
clubwomen  pin  their  faith  to  programmes  of  any  kind 
is  a  consequence  of  it.  The  substitution  of  something 
else  for  these  programmes,  with  the  accompanying 
change  in  the  interests  and  reading  of  clubwomen, 
will  be  one  step  toward  the  rationalisation  of  educa 
tion — for  all  processes  of  this  kind  are  essentially  ed 
ucative. 

We  need  not  despair  of  finding  ultimately  the  ex 
act  differences  in  method  which,  applied  in  the  educa 
tion  of  the  sexes,  will  minimise  such  of  the  present 
mental  differences  as  we  desire  to  obliterate.  Prob 
lems  of  this  sort  are  solved  usually  by  the  discovery 
of  some  automatic  process.  In  this  case  the  key  to 
siu-h  a  process  is  the  fact  that  the  mental  differences 
between  the  sexes  manifest  themselves  in  differences 
of  interest. 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  285 

Every  parent  of  boys  and  girls  knows  that  these 
differences  begin  early  to  show  themselves.  We  have 
been  too  prone  to  disregard  them  and  to  substitute  a 
set  of  imagined  differences  that  do  not  really  exist. 
We  go  about  the  moral  training  of  the  boy  and  the 
girl  in  precisely  the  same  way,  although  their  moral 
points  of  view  and  susceptibilities  differ  in  degree 
and  kind ;  and  then  we  marvel  that  we  do  not  get  pre 
cisely  similar  moral  products.  But  we  assume  that 
there  is  some  natural  objection  to  the  climbing  of 
trees  by  girls,  while  it  is  all  right  for  boys — an  imag 
inary  distinction  that  has  caused  tears  and  heart 
burnings.  We  are  outgrowing  this  particular  imag 
inary  distinction,  and  some  others  like  it.  Possibly 
we  may  also  outgrow  our  systems  of  co-education,  so 
far  as  this  means  the  subjection  of  the  male  and  the 
female  mind  to  exactly  the  same  processes  of  train 
ing.  The  training  of  the  sexes  in  the  same  institu 
tion,  with  its  consequent  mental  contact  between 
them,  has  nothing  to  do  with  this,  necessarily,  and 
has  advantages  that  cannot  be  overlooked. 

Whatever  we  do  in  school,  our  subsequent  educa 
tion,  which  goes  on  at  least  as  long  as  we  inhabit  this 
world,  must  be  in  and  through  social  contact,  men 
and  women  together.  But  if  each  sex  is  not  true  to 
itself  and  does  not  live  its  own  life,  the  results  can 
not  be  satisfactory.  Keactions  that  are  sought  in  an 
effort  made  by  women  to  conform  their  instincts,  as 
pirations  and  mental  processes  to  those  of  men  will 
be  feeble  or  perverted,  just  as  they  would  be  if  men 
should  seek  a  similar  distortion.  The  remedy  is  to 
let  the  woman's  mind  swing  into  the  channel  of  least 
resistance,  just  as  the  man's  always  has  done.  Then 
the  clubs,  and  the  clubwomen,  their  exercises,  their 
papers  and  their  preparatory  reading  will  all  be  re- 


286  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

leased  from  the  constraint  that  is  now  pinching  them 
and  pinning  them  down  and  will  bud  and  blossom  and 
grow  up  to  normal  and  valuable  fruition. 

We  have  started  with  the  fact  that  the  reading 
done  by  the  members  of  women's  clubs,  especially  in 
connection  with  club  papers,  is  often  trivial,  super 
ficial,  devoid  of  intelligence  and  lacking  in  judgment. 
Treating  this  as  a  symptom ;  we  have,  I  think,  traced 
the  cause  to  a  total  lack  of  interest  due  to  arbitrary, 
perfunctory  and  unintelligent  programme-making. 
The  disease  may  be  diagnosed,  I  think,  as  acute  pro- 
gramitis  and  the  physician  is  in  a  position  to  con 
sider  what  therapeutic  measures  may  be  indicated. 
We  shall  endeavor  to  prescribe  some  simple  reme 
dies. 

Ill— The  Remedy 

When  we  have  once  discovered  the  cause  of  a  mal 
ady,  we  may  proceed  in  two  ways  to  combat  it ;  either 
we  may  destroy  the  cause  or  we  may  render  the  pos 
sible  victims  immune.  To  put  it  a  little  differently, 
we  may  eliminate  either  of  the  two  elements  whose 
conjunction  causes  the  disease.  To  grow  weeds,  there 
must  co-exist  their  seeds  and  a  favourable  soil.  They 
may  be  exterminated  either  by  killing  the  seeds  or 
sterilising  the  soil.  Either  of  these  methods  may  be 
used  in  dealing  with  the  disease  that  prevails  among 
readers,  or,  if  you  prefer  the  other  metaphor,  with 
the  rank  vegetation  that  has  choked  the  fertile  soil  of 
their  minds,  making  any  legitimate  mental  crop  im 
possible.  We  have  seen  that  the  conditions  favor 
able  to  the  disease  are  a  lack  of  interest  and  a  fal 
lacious  idea  that  there  is  something  inherent  in  the 
printed  page  per  se  that  makes  its  perusal  valuable 
whether  the  reader  is  interested  or  not — somewhat  as 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING  287 

a  charm  is  supposed  to  work  even  when  it  is  in  a  lan 
guage  that  the  user  does  not  understand. 

We  are  considering  only  the  form  of  the  disease 
that  affects  clubwomen,  and  this  we  have  diagnosed 
as  programitis — the  imposition  of  a  set  programme  of 
work — which,  as  an  exciting  cause,  operates  on  the 
mental  soil  prepared  by  indifference  and  fetichism  to 
produce  the  malady  from  which  so  many  are  now 
suffering. 

I  think  physicians  will  generally  agree  that  where 
the  exciting  cause  can  be  totally  removed  that  method 
of  dealing  with  the  disease  is  far  more  effective  than 
any  attempt  to  secure  immunity.  I  believe  that  in 
most  cases  it  is  so  in  the  present  instance. 

In  other  words,  my  prescription  is  the  abandon 
ment,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  of  the  set  programme, 
and  the  substitution  of  something  that  is  interesting 
primarily  to  each  individual  concerned.  This  is  no 
new  doctrine.  Listen  to  William  James : 

Any  object  not  interesting  in  itself  may  become  interesting 
through  becoming  associated  with  an  object  in  which  an  interest 
already  exists.  The  two  associated  objects  grow,  as  it  were,  to 
gether  :  the  interesting  portion  sheds  its  quality  over  the  whole ; 
and  thus  things  not  interesting  in  their  own  right  borrow  an  in 
terest  which  becomes  as  real  and  as  strong  as  that  of  any  natively 
interesting  thing.  ...  If  we  could  recall  for  a  moment  our 
whole  individual  history,  we  should  see  that  our  professional  ideals 
and  the  zeal  they  inspire  are  due  to  nothing  but  the  slow  accretion 
of  one  mental  object  to  another,  traceable  backward  from  point  to 
point  till  we  reach  the  moment  when,  in  the  nursery  or  in  the 
schoolroom,  some  little  story  told,  some  little  object  shown,  some 
little  operation  witnessed,  brought  the  first  new  object  and  new  in 
terest  within  our  ken  by  associating  it  with  some  one  of  those 
primitively  there.  The  interest  now  suffusing  the  whole  system 
took  its  rise  in  that  little  event,  so  insignificant  to  us  now  as  to  be 
entirely  forgotten.  As  the  bees  in  swarming  cling  to  one  another 
in  layers  till  the  few  are  reached  whose  feet  grapple  the  bough 
from  which  the  swarm  depends;  so  with  the  objects  of  our  think 
ing — they  hang  to  each  other  by  associated  links,  but  the  original 
source  of  interest  in  all  of  them  is  the  native  interest  which  the 
earliest  one  once  possessed. 


288  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

If  we  are  to  exorcise  this  spirit  of  indifference 
that  has  settled  down  like  a  miasma  upon  clubdom 
we  must  find  James's  original  germ  of  interest — the 
twig  upon  which  our  cluster  of  bees  is  ultimately  to 
hang.  Here  we  may  introduce  two  axioms :  Everyone 
is  deeply  interested  in  something;  few  are  supremely 
interested  in  the  same  thing.  I  shall  not  attempt  to 
prove  these,  and  what  I  shall  have  to  say  will  be  ad 
dressed  only  to  those  who  can  accept  them  without 
proof.  But  I  am  convinced  that  illustrations  will 
occur  at  once  to  everyone.  Who  has  not  seen  the  man 
or  woman,  the  boy  or  girl  who,  apparently  stupid,  in 
different  and  able  to  talk  only  in  monosyllables,  is 
suddenly  shocked  into  interest  and  volubility  by  the 
mere  chance  mention  of  some  subject  of  conversation 
—birds,  or  religion,  or  Egyptian  antiquities,  or  dolls, 
or  skating,  or  Henry  the  Eighth?  There  are  millions 
of  these  electric  buttons  for  galvanising  dumb  clay 
into  mental  and  spiritual  life,  and  no  one  of  them  is 
likely  to  act  upon  more  than  a  very  few  in  a  given 
company — the  theory  of  chances  is  against  it.  That 
is  why  no  possible  programme  could  be  made  that 
would  fit  more  than  a  very  small  portion  of  a  given 
club.  We  have  seen  that  many  club-programmes  are 
made  with  an  irreducible  minimum  of  intelligence; 
but  even  a  programme  committee  with  superhuman 
intellect  and  angelic  goodwill  could  never  compass 
the  solution  of  such  a  problem  as  this.  Nor  will  it 
suffice  to  abandon  the  general  programme  and  en 
deavour  to  select  for  each  speaker  the  subject  that  lie 
would  like  best  to  study  and  expound.  No  one  knows 
what  these  subjects  are  but  the  owners  of  the  hearts 
that  love  them. 

We  have  seen  how  the  scientific  and  technical  so 
cieties  manage  the  matter  and  how  well  they  succeed. 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  289 

They  appoint  a  committee  whose  duty  it  is  to  receive 
contributions  and  to  select  the  worthiest  among  those 
presented.  The  matter  then  takes  care  of  itself. 
These  people  are  all  interested  in  something.  They 
are  finding  out  things  by  experimentation  or  thought; 
by  induction  or  deduction.  It  is  the  duty  and  the 
high  pleasure  of  each  to  tell  his  fellows  of  his  discov 
eries.  It  is  in  this  way  that  the  individual  gives  of 
his  best  to  the  race — the  triumph  of  the  social  in 
stinct  over  selfishness.  As  this  sort  of  intellectual 
profit-sharing  becomes  more  and  more  common,  the 
reign  of  the  social  instinct  will  extend  and  strength 
en.  To  do  one's  part  toward  such  an  end  ought  to  be 
a  pleasure,  and  this  is  one  reason  why  this  course  is 
commended  here  to  the  women's  clubs. 

Everyone,  I  repeat,  is  deeply  interested  in  some 
thing.  I  am  not  talking  of  idiots;  there  are  no  such 
in  women's  clubs.  I  have  been  telling  some  odd 
stories  of  clubwomen,  in  which  they  are  represented 
as  doing  and  saying  idiotic  things.  These  stories  are 
all  true,  and  if  one  should  take  the  time  to  collect  and 
print  others,  I  do  not  suppose,  as  the  sacred  writer 
says,  "that  all  the  world  could  contain  the  books  that 
should  be  written.''  Things  quite  as  idiotic  as  these 
that  I  have  reported  are  said  and  done  in  every  city 
and  every  hamlet  of  these  United  States  every  day  in 
the  year  and  every  hour  in  the  day — except  possibly 
between  three  and  five  A.M.,  and  sometimes  even  then. 
Yet  those  who  say  and  do  these  things  are  not  idiots. 
When  your  friend  Brown  is  telling  you  his  pet  anec 
dote  for  the  thirty-fifth  time,  or  when  Smith  insists 
that  you  listen  to  a  recital  of  the  uninteresting  ac 
complishments  of  his  newly-arrived  infant,  you  may 
allow  your  thoughts  to  wander  and  make  some  inane 
remark,  yet  you  are  not  an  idiot.  You  are  simply 


2l»0  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

not  interested.  You  are  using  most  of  your  mind  in 
another  direction  and  it  is  only  with  what  is  left  of  it 
that  you  hear  Brown  or  Smith  and  talk  to  him. 
Brown  or  Smith  is  not  dealing  with  your  personality 
as  a  whole,  but  with  a  residuum. 

And  this  is  what  is  the  matter  with  the  clubwo 
men  who  read  foolishly  and  ask  foolish  questions  in 
libraries.  They  are  residual  personalities.  Not  being 
at  all  interested  in  the  matter  in  hand,  they  are  de 
voting  to  it  only  a  minimum  part  of  their  brains ;  and 
what  they  do  and  say  is  comparable  with  the  act  of 
the  perambulating  professor,  who,  absorbed  in  math 
ematical  calculation,  lifted  his  hat  to  the  cow. 

The  professor  was  perhaps  pardonable,  for  his 
mind  was  not  wandering- — it  was  suffering,  on  the 
contrary,  from  excessive  concentration — but  it  was 
not  concentrated  on  the  cow.  In  the  case  of  the  club 
women,  the  role  of  the  cow  is  played  by  the  papers 
that  they  are  preparing,  while,  in  lieu  of  the  mathe 
matical  problems,  we  have  a  variety  of  really  absorb 
ing  siibjects,  more  or  less  important,  over  which  their 
minds  are  wandering.  What  we  must  do  is  to  cap 
ture  these  wandering  minds,  and  this  we  can  accom 
plish  only  by  enlisting  their  own  knowledge  of  what 
interests  them. 

If  yon  would  realise  the  difference  between  the 
mental  processes  of  a  mere  residue  and  those  of  the 
whole  personality  when  its  vigour  is  concentrated  on 
one  subject,  listen  first  to  one  of  those  perfunctory 
essays,  culled  from  a  collection  of  cyclopaedias,  and 
then  hear  a  whole  woman  throw  her  whole  self  into 
something.  Hear  her  candid  opinion  of  some  person 
or  thing  that  has  fallen  below  her  standard!  Hear 
her  able  analysis  of  the  case  at  law  between  her  fam 
ily  and  the  neighbours!  Hear  her  make  n  speech  on 


CLUBWOMEN'S    BEADING  21>1 

woman  suffrage — I  mean  when  it  is  really  to  her  the 
cause  of  causes;  there  are  those  who  take  it  up  for 
other  reasons,  as  the  club-women  do  their  papers,  with 
riot  dissimilar  results.  In  all  these  cases  clearness  of 
presentation,  weight  of  invective,  keenness  of  analy 
sis  spring  from  interest.  None  of  these  women,  if  she 
has  a  feminine  mind,  treats  these  things  as  a  man 
would.  We  men  are  very  apt  to  complain  of  the  wo 
man's  mental  processes,  for  the  same  reason  that  nar 
row  "patriots"  always  suspect  and  deride  the  meth 
ods  of  a  foreigner,  simply  because  they  are  strange 
«and  we  do  not  understand  them.  Hut  what  we  are 
compelled  to  think  of  the  results  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  when  we  are  truly  wise  we  are  apt.  to  seek  the 
advice  and  counsel  of  the  other  sex  and  to  act  upon  it, 
even  when  we  cannot  fathom  the  processes  by  which 
it  was  reached. 

All  the  more  reason  this  why  the  woman  should 
be  left  to  herself  and  not  forced  to  model  her  club 
paper  on  the  mental  processes  of  a  man,  used  with 
many  necessary  elisions  and  sometimes  with  very  bad 
workmanship,  in  the  construction  of  the  cyclopaedia 
article  never  intended  to  be  employed  for  any  such 
purpose. 

Perhaps  we  can  never  make1  the  ordinary  club 
woman  talk  like  Susan  P>.  Anthony,  or  Anna  Shaw, 
or  Beatrice  Hale,  or  Fola  La  Follette;  any  more  than 
we  can  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  ordinary  business 
man  the  words  of  Lincoln,  or  John  H.  Gough,  or  Phil 
lips  Brooks,  or  Raymond  Robins — but  get  somehow 
into  the  weakest  of  either  sex  the  impulses,  the  inter 
ests,  the  energies  that  once  stood  or  now  stand  be 
hind  the  utterances  of  any  one  of  these  great  Amer 
icans,  and  see  if  the  result  is  not  something  worth 
while ! 


292  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

An  appreciative  critic  of  the  first  paper  in  this 
series,  writing  in  The  Yale  Alumni  Weekly,  gives  it 
as  his  opinion  that  these  readers  are  in  the  first  stage 
of  their  education — that  of  "initial  intellectual  inter 
est."  He  says:  "Curiosity,  then  suspicion,  come 
later  to  grow  into  individual  intellectual  judgment.'' 

I  wish  I  could  agree  that  what  we  have  diagnosed 
as  a  malady  is  only  an  early  stage  of  somthing  that 
is  ultimately  to  develop  into  matured  judgment.  But 
the  facts  seem  clearly  to  show  that,  far  from  possess 
ing  "initial  intellectual  interest,"  these  readers  are 
practically  devoid  of  any  kind  of  interest  whatever, 
properly  speaking.  Such  as  they  have  is  not  proper 
to  the.  subject,  but  simply  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
desire  to  retain  their  club  membership,  to  fulfil  their 
club  duties,  and  to  act  in  general  as  other  women  do 
in  other  clubs.  To  go  back  to  our  recent  simile,  it  is 
precisely  the  same  interest  that  keeps  you  listening, 
or  pretending  to  listen,  to  a  bore,  while  you  are  really 
thinking  of  something  else.  If  you  were  free  to  fol 
low  your  impulses,  you  would  insult  the  bore,  or 
throw  him  downstairs,  or  retreat  precipitately.  You 
are  inhibited  by  your  sense  of  propriety  and  your 
recognition  of  what  is  due  to  a  fellow-man,  no  matter 
how  boresome  he  may  be.  The  clubwoman  doubtless 
has  a  strong  impulse  to  throw  the  encyclopaedia  out 
of  the  window,  or  to  insult  the  librarian  (occasionally 
she  does)  or  even  to  resign  from  the  club.  She  is 
prevented,  in  like  manner,  by  her  sense  of  propriety, 
and  often,  too.  we  must  admit,  by  a  real,  though  rudi 
mentary,  desire  for  knowledge.  But  such  inhibitions 
cannot  develop  into  judgment.  They  are  merely  neg 
ative,  while  the  interest  that  has  a  valuable  outcome 
is  positive. 

Another  thing  that  we  shall  do  well  to  remember 
is  that  no  condition  or  relation  one  of  whose  elements 


CLUBWOMEN'S    HEADING  293 

or  factors  is  the  human  mind  can  ever  be  properly 
considered  apart  from  that  mind.  Shakespeare's 
plays  would  seem  to  be  fairly  unalterable.  Shake 
speare  is  dead  and  cannot  change  them,  and  they  have 
been  written  down  in  black  and  white  this  many  a 
year.  But  the  real  play,  so  far  as  it  makes  any  dif 
ference  to  us  to-day,  is  not  in  the  books;  or,  at  least, 
the  book  is  but  one  of  its  elements.  It  is  the  effect 
produced  upon  the  auditor,  and  of  this  a  very  im 
portant  element  is  the  auditor's  mental  and  spiritual 
state.  Considered  from  this  standpoint,  Shake 
speare's  plays  have  been  changing  ever  since  they 
were  written.  Environment,  physical  and  mental, 
has  altered;  the  language  has  developed;  the  plain, 
ordinary  talk  of  Shakespeare's  time  now  seems  to  us 
quaint  and  odd;  every-day  allusions  have  become 
cryptic.  It  all  "ain't  up  to  date,"  to  quote  the  Cock 
ney's  complaint  about  it.  Probably  no  one  to-day  can 
under  any  circumstances  get  the  same  reaction  to  a 
play  of  Shakespeare  as  that  of  his  original  audience, 
and  probably  no  one  ever  will. 

Anecdotes  possess  a  sort  of  centripetal  force; 
tales  illustrative  of  the  matter  at  hand  have  been  fly 
ing  to  me  from  all  parts  of  the  country.  From  the 
Pacific  Northwest  comes  this,  which  seems  pertinent 
just  here.  A  good  clubwoman,  who  had  been  slaving 
all  day  over  a  paper  on  Chaucer,  finally  at  its  close 
threw  down  her  pen  and  exclaimed,  "Oh,  dear !  I  wish 
Chaucer  were  dead!"  She  had  her  wish  in  more 
senses  than  the  obvious  one.  Not  only  has  Chaucer's 
physical  body  long  ago  given  up  its  substance  to 
earth  and  air,  but  his  works  have  to  be  translated  for 
most  readers  of  the  present  day ;  his  language  is  fast 
becoming  as  dead  as  Latin  or  Greek.  But,  worse  still, 
his  very  spirit  was  dead,  so  far  as  its  reaction  on  her 
was  concerned.  Poetry,  to  yon  and  me,  is  what  we 


294  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

make  of  it;  and  what  do  you  suppose  our  friend  from 
Oregon  was  making  of  Chaucer?  Our  indifference, 
our  failure  to  react,  is  thus  more  far-reaching  than 
its  influence  on  ourselves — it  is,  in  some  sense,  a  sin 
against  the  immortal  souls  of  those  who  have  be 
queathed  their  spiritual  selves  to  the  world  in  books. 
And  this  sin  the  clubs  are,  in  more  cases  than  I  care 
to  think,  forcing  deliberately  upon  their  members. 

A  well-known  cartoonist  toiled  long  in  early  life 
at  some  uncongenial  task  for  a  pittance.  Meanwhile 
he  drew  pictures  for  fun,  and  one  day  a  journalist, 
seeing  one  of  his  sketches,  offered  him  fifty  dollars 
for  it — the  salary  of  many  days.  "And  when,'-  said 
the  cartoonist,  "I  found  I  could  get  more  money  by 
playing  than  by  working,  I  swore  I  would  never  work 
again — and  I  haven't." 

When  we  can  all  play — do  exactly  what  we  like — 
and  keep  ourselves  arid  the  world  running  by  it,  then 
the  Earthly  Paradise  will  be  achieved.  But,  mean 
while,  cannot  we  realize  that  these  clubwomen  will 
accomplish  more  if  we  can  direct  and  control  their 
voluntary  activity,  backed  by  their  whole  mental  en 
ergy,  than  when  they  devote  some  small  part  of  their 
minds  to  an  uncongenial  task,  dictated  by  a  pro 
gramme  committee? 

I  shall  doubtless  be  reminded  that,  the  larger  clubs 
are  now  generally  divided  into  sections,  and  that 
membership  in  these  sections  is  supposed  to  be  dic 
tated  by  interest.  This  is  a  step  in  the  right  direc 
tion,  but  it  is  an  excessively  short  one.  The  pro 
gramme,  with  all  its  vicious  accompaniments  and 
lamentable  results,  persists.  What  I  have  said  and 
shall  say  applies  as  well  to  an  art  or  a  domestic  sci 
ence  section  as  to  a  club  in  toto. 

To  bring  down  the  treatment  to  a  definite  pre 
scription,  let  ns  suppose  that  the  committee  in  charge 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING  295 

of  a  club's  activities,  instead  of  marking  out  a  definite 
programme  for  the  season,  should  simply  announce 
that  communications  on  subjects  of  personal  interest 
to  the  members,  embodying  some  new  and  original 
thought,  method,  idea,  device,  or  mode  of  treatment, 
would  be  received,  and  that  the  best  of  these  would 
be  read  and  discussed  before  the  club,  after  which 
some  would  appear  in  print.  No  conditions  would  be 
stated,  but  it  would  be  understood  that  such  features 
as  length  and  style,  as  well  as  subject  matter,  would 
be  considered  in  selecting  the  papers  to  be  read. 
Above  all,  it  would  be  insisted  that  no  paper  should 
be  considered  that  was  merely  copied  from  anything, 
either  in  substance  or  idea.  It  is,  of  course,  possible 
to  constitute  a  paper  almost  entirely  of  quotations 
and  yet  so  to  group  and  discuss  these  that  the  paper 
becomes  an  original  contribution  to  thought;  but 
mere  parrot-like  repetition  of  ascertained  facts,  or  of 
other  people's  thoughts,  should  not  be  tolerated. 

Right  here  the  first  obstacle  would  be  encount 
ered.  Club  members,  accustomed  to  be  assigned  for 
study  subjects  like  "The  Metope  of  the  Parthenon" 
or  "The  True  Significance  of  Hyperspace,"  will  not 
easily  comprehend  that  they  are  really  desired  to  put 
briefly  on  paper  original  ideas  about  something  that 
they  know  at  first  hand.  Mrs.  Jones  makes  better 
sponge  cake  than  any  one  in  town;  the  fact  is  known 
to  all  her  friends.  If  sponge  cake  is  a  desirable  prod 
uct,  why  should  not  the  woman  who  has  discovered 
the  little  knack  that  turns  failure  into  success,  and 
who  is  proud  of  her  ability  and  special  knowledge, 
tell  her  club  of  it,  instead  of  laboriously  copying  from 
a  book — or,  let  us  say,  from  two  or  three  books — some 
one  else's  compilation  of  the  facts  ascertained  at 
second  or  third  hand  by  various  other  writers  on 
"The  Character  of  the  Cid"?  Why  should  not  Mrs. 


296  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

Smith,  wlio  was  out  over  night  in  the  blizzard  of  1888, 
recount  her  experiences,  mental  as  well  as  physical? 
Why  should  not  Miss  Robinson,  who  collects  coins 
and  differs  from  the  accepted  authorities  regarding 
the  authenticity  of  certain  of  her  specimens,  tell  why 
and  how  and  all  about  it?  Why  should  not  the  mem 
ber  who  is  crazy  about  begonias  and  the  one  who 
thinks  she  saw  Uncle  Hiram's  ghost,  and  she  who  has 
read  and  re-read  George  Meredith,  seeing  beauties  in 
him  that  no  one  else  ever  detected — why  should  not 
one  and  all  give  their  fellows  the  benefit  of  the  really 
valuable  special  knowledge  that  they  have  acquired 
through  years  of  interested  thinking  and  talking  and 
doing? 

But  there  will  be, trouble,  as  I  have  said.  The 
thing,  simple  as  it  is,  would  be  too  unaccustomed  to 
comprehend.  And  then  a  real  article  in  a  real  cyclo 
paedia  by  a  real  writer  is  Information  with  a  big  "I." 
My  little  knowledge  about  making  quince  jelly,  or 
darning  stockings,  or  driving  an  auto,  or  my  thoughts 
about  the  intellectual  differences  between  Dickens 
and  Thackeray,  or  my  personal  theories  of  conduct, 
or  my  reasons  for  preferring  hot- water  heat  to  steam 
—these  are  all  too  trivial  to  mention;  is  it  possible 
that  you  want  me  to  write  them  down  on  paper? 

It  may  thus  happen  that  when  the  committee 
opens  its  mail  it  may  find — nothing.  What,  then? 
Logically,  I  should  be  forced  to  say:  Well,  if  none 
of  your  members  is  interested  enough  in  anything  to 
have  some  original  information  to  tell  about  it,  dis 
band  your  club.  What  is  the  use  of  it?  Even  three 
newsboys,  when  they  meet  on  the  street  corner,  begin 
at  once  to  interchange  ideas.  Where  are  yours? 

Possibly  this  would  be  too  drastic.     It  might  bo 
better  to  hold  a  meeting,  state  the  failure,    and  ad 
journ  for  another  trial.     It  might  be  well  to  repeat^ 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING  297 

this  several  times,  in  the  hope  that  the  fact  that  ab 
sence  of  original  ideas  means  no  proceedings  might 
soak  in  and  germinate.  If  this  does  not  work,  it  might 
be  possible  to  fight  the  devil  with  fire,  by  going  back 
to  the  programme  method  so  far  as  to  assign  definite 
ly  to  me'mbers  subjects  in  which  they  are  known  to  be 
deeply  interested.  This,  in  fact,  is  the  second  method 
of  treatment  mentioned  at  the  outset,  namely,  the  en 
deavour  to  secure  immunity  where  the  germ  cannot 
be  exterminated.  We  shall  probably  never  be  able  to 
rid  the  world  of  the  bacillus  tuberculosis;  the  best  we 
can  do  is  to  keep  as  clear  of  it  as  we  can  and  to 
strengthen  our  powers  of  resistance  to  it.  So,  if  we 
cannot  kill  the  programme  all  at  once,  let  us  strive 
to  make  it  innocuous  and  to  minimise  its  evil  effects 
on  its  victims. 

Let  ns  suppose,  IIOAV,  that  in  one.  way  or  another, 
it  is  brought  about  that  every  club  member  who  reads 
a  paper  is  reporting  the  result  of  some  personal  ex 
perience  in  which  her  interest  is  vivid — some  discov 
ery,  acquisition,  method,  idea,  criticism  or  apprecia 
tion  that  is  the  product  of  her  own  life  and  of  the 
particular,  personal  way  in  which  she  has  lived  it. 

What  a  result  this  will  have  on  that  woman's 
reading — on  what  she  does  before  she  writes  her 
paper  and  on  what  she  goes  through  after  it!  If  her 
interest  is  as  vivid  as  wre  assume  it  to  be,  she  will  not 
be  content  to  recount  her  own  experiences  without 
comparing  them  with  those  of  others.  And  after  her 
paper  has  been  read  and  the  comment  and  criticism 
of  other  interested  members  have  been  brought  out— 
of  some,  perhaps,  whose  interest  she  had  never  before 
suspected,  then  she  will  feel  a  fresh  impulse  to  search 
for  new  accounts  and  to  devour  them.  There  is  no 
longer  anything  perfunctory  about  the  matter.  She 
can  no  longer  even  trust  the  labour  of  looking  up  her 


298  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

references  to  others.  She  becomes  an  investigator; 
she  feels  something  of  the  joy  of  those  who  add  to  the 
sum  of  human  knowledge. 

And  lo!  the  problem  of  clubwomen's  reading  is 
solved!  The  wandering  mind  is  captured;  the  inane 
residuum  is  abolished  by  ipion  with  the  rest  to  form 
a  normal,  intelligent  whole.  No  more  idiotic  ques 
tions,  no  more  cyclopaedia-copying,  no  more  wool 
gathering  programmes.  Is  it  too  much  to  expect? 
Alas,  we  are  but  mortal! 

I  trust  it  has  been  made  sufficiently  clear  that  I 
think  meanly  neither  of  the  intellectual  ability  of  wo 
men  nor  of  the  services  of  women's  clubs.  The  object 
of  these  papers  is  to  give  the  former  an  opportunity 
to  assert  itself,  and  the  latter  a  chance  to  profit  by 
the  assertion.  The  woman's  club  of  the  future  should 
be  a  place  where  original  ideas,  fed  and  directed  by 
interested  reading,  are  exchanged  and  discussed. 
Were  I  writing  of  men's  clubs,  I  should  point  out  to 
them  the  same  goal.  And  then,  perhaps,  we  may  look 
forward  to  a  time  when  a  selected  group  of  men  and 
women  may  come  together  and  talk  of  tilings  in 
which  they  both,  as  men  and  women,  are  interested. 

When  this  happens,  I  trust  that  in  the  discussion 
we1  shall  not  heed  the  advice  of  some  modern  femin 
ists  and  forget  that  we  are  as  God  made  us.  Why 
should  each  man  talk  to  a  woman  "as  if  she  were  an 
other  man"?  I  never  heard  it  advised  that  each  wo 
man  should  talk  to  each  man  "as  if  he  were  another 
woman";  but  I  should  resent  it  if  I  did.  Why  shut 
our  eyes  to  the  truth?  I  trust  that  I  have  not  been 
talking  to  the  club-women  "as  if  they  were  men" ;  I 
am  sure  I  have  not  meant  to  do  so.  They  are  not 
men ;  they  have  their  own  ways,  and  those  ways 
should  be  developed  and  encouraged.  We  have  had 
the  psychology  of  race,  of  the  crowd  and  of  the  crim- 


CLUBWOMEN'S    READING  299 

inal;  where  is  the  investigator  who  has  studied  the 
Psychology  of  Woman?  When  she  (note  the  pro 
noun  )  has  arrived,  let  us  make  her  president  of  a  wo 
man's  club. 

It  is  with  diffidence  that  I  have  outlined  any  def 
inite  procedure,  because,  after  all,  the  precise  man 
ner  in  which  the  treatment  should  be  applied  will  de 
pend,  of  course,  on  the  club  concerned.  To  prescribe 
for  you  most  effectively,  your  physician  should  be  an 
intimate  friend.  He  should  have  known  you  from 
birth — better  still,  he  should  have  cared  for  your 
father  and  your  grandfather  before  you.  Otherwise, 
he  prescribes  for  an  average  man;  and  you  may  be 
very  far  from  the  average.  The  drug  that  he  admin 
isters  to  quiet  your  nerves  may  act  on  your  heart  and 
give  you  the  smothers — it  might  conceivably  quiet 
you  permanently.  Then  the  doctor  would  send  to  his 
medical  journal  a  note  on  "A  Curious  Case  of  Uinp- 
tiol  Poisoning,''  but  you  would  still  be  dead,  even  if 
all  his  readers  should  agree  with  him. 

I  have  no  desire  to  bring  about  casualties  of  this 
kind.  Let  those  who  know  and  love  each  particular 
club  devote  themselves  to  the  task  of  applying  mv 
treatment  to  it  in  a  way  that  will  involve  a  minimum 
shock  to  its  nerves  and  a  minimum  amount  of  inter 
ference  with  its  metabolic  processes.  It  will  take 
time.  Rome  was  not  built  in  a  day,  and  a  revolution 
in  clubdom  is  not  going  to  be  accomplished  over  night. 

I  have  prescribed  simple  remedies — too  simple,  I 
am  convinced,  to  be  readily  adopted.  What  could  be 
simpler  than  to  advise  the  extermination  of  all  germ 
diseases  by  killing  off  the  germs?  Any  physician  will 
tell  you  that  this  method  is  the  very  acme  of  effi 
ciency;  yet,  the  germs  are  still  with  us,  and  bid  fair  to 
spread  suffering  and  death  over  our  planet  for  many 
a  long  year  to  come.  So  I  am  not  sanguine  that  we 


300  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

shall  be  able  all  at  once  to  kill  off  the  programmes. 
All  that  may  be  expected  is  that  at  some  distant  day 
the  simplicity  and  effectiveness  of  some  plan  of  the 
sort  will  begin  to  commend  itself  to  clubwomen.  If, 
then,  some  lover  of  the  older  literature  will  point  out 
the  fact  that,  back  in  1915,  the  gloomy  era  when  fight 
ing  hordes  were  spreading  blood  and  carnage  over  the 
fair  face  of  Europe,  an  obscure  and  humble  librarian, 
in  the  pages  of  THE  BOOKMAN,,  pointed  out  the  way  to 
sanity,  I  shall  be  well  content. 


BOOKS  FOE  TIKED  EYES 

The  most  distinctive  thing  about  a  book  is  the 
possibility  that  someone  may  read  it.  Is  this  a  tru 
ism?  Evidently  not;  for  the  publishers,  who  print 
books,  and  the  libraries,  which  store  and  distribute 
them,  have  never  thought  it  worth  their  while  to  col 
lect  and  record  information  bearing  on  this  possibil 
ity.  In  the  publisher's  or  the  bookseller's  advertis 
ing  announcements,  as  well  as  on  the  catalogue  cards 
stored  in  the  library's  trays,  the  reader  may  ascer 
tain  when  and  where  the  book  was  published,  the 
number  of  pages,  and  whether  it  contains  plates  or 
maps;  but  not  a  word  of  the  size  or  style  of  type  in 
which  it  is  printed.  Yet  on  this  depends  the  ability 
of  the  reader  to  use  the  book  for  the  purpose  for 
which  it  was  intended.  The  old-fashioned  reader  was 
a  mild-mannered  gentleman.  If  he  could  not  read  his 
book  because  it  was  printed  in  outrageously  small 
type,  he  laid  it  aside  with  a  sigh,  or  used  a  magnify 
ing  lens,  or  persisted  in  his  attempts  with  the  naked 
eye  until  eyestrain,  with  its  attendant  maladies,  was 
the  result.  Lately  however,  the  libraries  have  been 
waking  up,  and  their  readers  with  them.  The  util 
itarian  side  of  the  work  is  pushed  to  the  front;  and 
the  reader  is  by  no  means  disposed  to  accept  what 
may  be  offered  him,  either  in  the  content  of  the  book 
or  its  physical  make-up.  The  modern  library  must 
adapt  itself  to  its  users,  and  among  other  improve 
ments  must  come  an  attempt  to  go  as  far  as  possible 
in  making  books  physiologically  readable. 

Unfortunately  the  library  cannot  control  the  out 
put  of  books,  and  must  limit  itself  to  selection.  An 


302  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

experiment  in  such  selection  is  now  in  progress  in  the 
St.  Louis  Public  Library.  The  visitor  to  that  library 
will  find  in  its  Open  Shelf  Room  a  section  of  shelving 
marked  with  the  words  "Books  in  large  type."  To 
this  section  are  directed  all  readers  who  have  found 
it  difficult  or  painful  to  read  the  ordinary  printed 
page  but  who  do  not  desire  to  wear  magnifying 
lenses.  It  has  riot  been  easy  to  fill  these  shelves,  for 
books  in  large  type  are  few,  and  hard  to  secure,  de 
spite  the  fact  that  artists,  printers,  and  oculists  have 
for  years  been  discussing  the  proper  size,  form,  and 
grouping  of  printed  letters  from  their  various  stand 
points.  Perhaps  it  is  time  to  urge  a  new  view — that 
of  the  public  librarian,  anxious  to  please  his  clients 
and  to  present  literature  to  them  in  that  physical 
form  which  is  most  easily  assimilable  and  least  harm 
ful. 

Tired  eyes  belong,  for  the  most  part,  to  those  who 
have  worked  them  hardest;  that  is,  to  readers  who 
have  entered  upon  middle  age  or  have  already  passed 
through  it.  At  this  age  we  become  conscious  that 
the  eye  is  a  delicate  instrument — a  fact  which,  how 
ever  familiar  to  us  in  theory,  has  previously  been  re 
garded  with  aloofness.  Now  it  comes  home  to  us. 
The  length  of  a  sitting,  the  quality,  quantity,  and  in 
cidence  of  the  light,  and  above  all,  the  arrangement 
of  the  printed  page,  become  matters  of  vital  im 
portance  to  us.  A  book  with  small  print,  or  letters 
illegibly  grouped,  or  of  unrecognizable  shapes,  be 
comes  as  impossible  to  us  as  if  it  were  printed  in  the 
Chinese  character. 

It  is  an  unfortunate  law  of  nature  that  injurious 
acts  appear  to  us  in  their  true  light  only  after  the 
harm  is  done.  The  burnt  child  dreads  the  fire  after 
he  has  been  burned — not  before.  So  the  fact  that  the 
middle-aged  man  cannot  read  small,  or  crooked,  or 


BOOKS    FOR    TIKED    EYES  303 

badly  grouped  type  means  simply  that  the  harmful- 
ness  of  these  things,  which  always  existed  for  him, 
has  cumulated  throughout  a  long  tale  of  years  until 
it  has  obtruded  itself  upon  him  in  the  form  of  an  in 
hibition.  The  books  that  are  imperative  for  the  tired 
eyes  of  middle  age,  are  equally  necessary  for  those  of 
youth — did  youth  but  know  it.  Curiously  enough,  we 
are  accustomed  to  begin,  in  teaching  the  young  to 
read,  with  very  legible  type.  When  the  eyes  grow 
stronger,  we  begin  to  maltreat  them.  So  it  is,  also, 
with  the  digestive  organs,  which  we  first  coddle  with 
pap,  then  treat  awhile  with  pork  and  cocktails,  and 
then,  perforce,  entertain  with  pap  of  the  second  and 
final  period.  What  correspond,  in  the  field  of  vision, 
to  pork  and  cocktails,  are  the  vicious  specimens  of 
typography  offered  on  all  sides  to  readers — in  books, 
pamphlets,  magazines,  and  newspapers — typography 
that  is  slowly  but  surely  ruining  the  eyesight  of  those 
tli at  need  it  most. 

Hitherto,  the  public  librarian  has  been  more  con 
cerned  with  the  minds  and  the  morals  of  his  clientele 
than  with  that  physical  organism  without  which 
neither  mind  nor  morals  would  be  of  much  use.  It 
would  be  easy  to  pick  out  on  the  shelves  of  almost  any 
public  library  books  that  are  a  physiological  scandal, 
printed  in  type  that  it  is  an  outrage  to  place  before 
any  self-respecting  reader.  I  have  seen  copies  of 
"Tom  Jonesv  that  I  should  be  willing  to  burn,  as  did 
a  puritanical  British  library-board  of  newspaper  no 
toriety.  My  reasons,  however,  would  be  typographic, 
not  moral,  and  I  might  want  to  add  a  few  copies  of 
"The  Pilgrim's  Progress"  and  "The  Saint's  Everlast 
ing  Rest,"  without  prejudice  to  the  authors'  share  in 
those  works,  which  T  admire  and  respect.  Perhaps  it 
is  too  much  to  ask  for  complete  typographical  expur 
gation  of  our  libraries.  But,  at  least,  readers  with 


304  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

tired  eyes  who  do  not  yet  wear,  or  care  to  wear,  cor 
rective  lenses,  should  be  able  to  find,  somewhere  on 
the  shelves,  a  collection  of  works  in  relatively  harm 
less  print — large  and  black,  clear  in  outline,  simple 
and  distinctive  in  form,  properly  grouped  and  spaced. 

The  various  attempts  to  standardize  type-sizes 
and  to  adopt  a  suitable  notation  for  them  have  been 
limited  hitherto  to  the  sizes  of  the  type-body  and  bear 
only  indirectly  on  the  size  of  the  actual  letter.  More 
or  less  arbitrary  names —  such  as  minion,  bourgeois, 
brevier,  and  nonpareil, — were  formerly  used;  but 
what  is  called  the  point-system  is  now  practically 
universal,  although  its  unit,  the  "pointy'  is  not  every 
where  the  same.  Roughly  speaking,  a  point  is  one- 
seventy-second  of  an  inch,  so  that  in  three-point  type, 
for  example,  the  thickness  of  the  type-body,  from  the 
top  to  the  bottom  of  the  letter  on  its  face,  is  one- 
twenty-fourth  of  an  inch.  But  on  this  type-body  the 
face  may  be  large  or  small — although  of  course,  it 
cannot  be  larger  than  the  body, — and  the  size  of  the 
letters  called  by  precisely  the  same  name  in  the  point 
notation  may  vary  within  pretty  wide  limits.  There 
is  no  accepted  notation  for  the  size  of  the  letters 
themselves,  and  this  fact  tells,  more  eloquently  than 
words,  that  the  present  sizes  of  type  are  standardized 
and  defined  for  compositors  only,  not  for  readers, 
and  still  less  for  scientific  students  of  the  effect  upon 
the  readers'  eyes  of  different  arrangements  of  the 
printed  page. 

What  seems  to  have  been  the  first  attempt  to  de 
fine  sizes  of  type  suitable  for  school  grades  was  made 
fifteen  years  ago  by  Mr  Edward  R.  Shaw  in  his 
"School  Hygiene'' ;  he  advocates  sizes  from  eighteen- 
point  in  the  first  year  to  twelve-point  for  the  fourth. 
"Principals,  teachers,  and  school  superintendents," 
he  says,  "should  possess  a  millimetre  measure  and  a 


BOOKS    EOK    TIKED    EYES  305 

magnifying  glass,  and  should  subject  every  book  pre 
sented  for  their  examination  to  a  test  to  determine 
whether  the  size  of  the  letters  and  the  width  of  the 
leading  are  of  such  dimensions  as  will  not  prove  in 
jurious  to  the  eyes  of  children."  To  this  list,  libra 
rians  might  be  well  added — not  to  speak  of  authors, 
editors,  and  publishers.  In  a  subsequent  part  of  his 
chapter  on  "Eyesight  and  Hearing,"  from  which  the 
above  sentence  is  quoted,  appears  a  test  of  illumina 
tion  suggested  by  "The  Medical  Becord"  of  Stras- 
burg,  which  may  serve  as  a  "horrid  example"  in  some 
such  way  as  did  the  drunken  brother  who  accom 
panied  the  temperance  lecturer.  According  to  this 
authority,  if  a  pupil  is  unable  to  read  diamond  type 
— four-and-one-half-point — "at  twelve-inch  distance 
and  without  strain,"  the  illumination  is  dangerously 
low.  The  adult  who  tries  the  experiment  will  be  in 
clined  to  conclude  that  whatever  the  illumination, 
the  proper  place  for  the  man  who  uses  diamond  type 
for  any  purpose  is  the  penitentiary. 

The  literature  upon  this  general  subject,  such  as 
it  is,  is  concerned  largely  with  its  relations  with 
school  hygiene.  We  are  bound  to  give  our  children  a 
fair  start  in  life,  in  conditions  of  vision  as  well  as 
in  other  respects,  even  if  we  are  careless  about  our 
selves.  The  topic  of  "Conservation  of  Vision,"  in 
which,  however,  type-size  played  but  a  small  part, 
was  given  special  attention  at  the  Fourth  Interna 
tional  Congress  of  School  Hygiene,  held  in  Buffalo  in 
1913.  Investigations  on  the  subject,  so  far  as  they 
affect  the  child  in  school,  are  well  summed  up  in  the 
last  chapter  of  Huey's  "Psychology  and  Pedagogy  of 
Reading."  In  general,  the  consensus  of  opinion  of 
investigators  seems  to  be  that  the  most  legible  type 
is  that  between  eleven-point  and  fourteen-point.  Opi 
nion  regarding  space  between  lines,  due  to  "leading." 


30(J  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

is  not  quite  so  harmonious.  Some  authorities  think 
that  it  is  better  to  increase  the  size  of  the  letters ;  and 
Huey  asserts  that  an  attempt  to  improve  unduly 
small  type  by  making  wide  spaces  between  lines  is  a 
mistake. 

As  to  the  relative  legibility  of  different  type-faces, 
one  of  the  most  exhaustive  investigations  Avas  that 
made  at  Clark  University  by  Miss  Barbara  E. 
Roethlin,  whose  results  were  published  in  1912.  This 
study  considers  questions  of  form,  style,  and  group 
ing,  independently  of  mere  size;  and  the  conclusion  is 
that  legibility  is  a  product  of  six  factors,  of  which 
size  is  one,  the  others  being  form,  heaviness  of  face, 
width  of  the  margin  around  the  letter,  position  in  the 
letter-group,  and  shape  and  size  of  adjoining  letters. 
For  "tired  eyes"  the  size  factor  would  appear  of  over 
whelming  importance  except  where  the  other 
elements  make  the  page  fantastically  illegible.  In 
Miss  Roethlin's  tables,  based  upon  a  combination  of 
the  factors  mentioned  above4,  the  maximum  of 
legibility  almost  always  coincides  with  that  of  size. 
These  experiments  seem  to  have  influenced  printers, 
whose  organization  in  Boston  lias  appointed  a  com 
mittee  to  urge  upon  the  Carnegie  Institution  the  es 
tablishment  of  a  department  of  research  to  make 
scientific  tests  of  printing-types  in  regard  to  the  com 
parative  legibility  and  the  possibility  of  improving 
some  of  their  forms.  Their  effort,  so  far,  has  met 
with  no  success;  but  the  funds  at  the  disposal  of  this 
body  could  surely  be  put  to  no  better  use. 

With  regard  to  the  improvement  of  legibility  by 
alteration  of  form,  it  has  been  recognized  by  experi 
ments  from  the  outset  that  the  letters  of  our  alpha 
bet,  especially  the  small,  or  "lower-case"  letters,  are 
not  equally  legible.  Many  proposals  for  modifying 
or  changing  them  have  beer:  made,  some  of  them  odd 


BOOKS    FOR    TIRED    EYES  307 

or  repugnant.  It  has  been  suggested,  for  instance, 
that  the  Greek  lambda  be  substituted  for  our  I, 
which  in  its  present  form  is  easily  confused  with  the 
dotted  i.  Other  pairs  of  letters  ( //  and  n,  o  and  e, 
for  example)  are  differentiated  with  difficulty.  The 
privilege  of  modifying  alphabetic  form  is  one  that 
has  been  frequently  exercised.  The  origin  of  the  Ger 
man  alphabet  and  our  own,  for  instance,  is  the  same, 
and  no  lower-case  letters  in  any  form  date  further 
back  than  the  Middle  Ages.  There  could  be  no  well- 
founded  objection  to  any  change,  in  the  interests  of 
legibility,  that  is  not  so  far-reaching  as  to  make  the 
whole  alphabet  look  foreign  and  unfamiliar.  It  may 
be  queried,  however,  whether  the  lower-case  alphabet 
had  not  better  be  reformed  by  abolishing  it  alto 
gether.  There  would  appear  to  be  no  good  reason 
for  using  two  alphabets,  now  one  and  now  the  other, 
according  to  arbitrary  rules,  difficult  to  learn  and 
hard  to  remember.  That  the  general  legibility  of 
books  would  benefit  by  doing  away  with  this  mediae 
val  excrescence  appears  to  admit  of  no  doubt, 
although  the  proposal  may  seem  somewhat  startling 
to  the  general  reader. 

In  1911,  a  committee  was  appointed  by  the  Brit 
ish  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  "to 
inquire  into  the  influence  of  school-books  upon  eye 
sight/'  This  committee's  report  dwells  on  the  fact 
that  the  child's  eye  is  still  in  process  of  development 
and  needs  larger  type  than  the  fully  developed  eye 
of  the  adult.  In  making  its  recommendation  for  the 
standardization  of  school-book  type,  which  it  con 
siders  the  solution  of  the  difficulty,  the  committee 
emphasizes  the  fact  that  forms  and  sizes  most  legible 
for  isolated  letters  are  not  necessarily  so  for  the 
groups  that  need  to  be  quickly  recognized  by  the 
trained  reader.  It  dwells  upon  the  importance  of 


308  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

ung lazed  paper,  flexible  sewing,  clear,  bold  illustra 
tions,  black  ink,  and  true  alignment.  Condensed  or 
compressed  letters  are  condemned,  as  are  long  serifs 
and  hair  strokes.  On  the  other  hand,  very  heavy- 
faced  type  is  almost  as  objectionable  as  that  with  the 
fine  lines,  the  ideal  being  a  proper  balancing  of  whites 
and  blacks  in  each  letter  and  group.  The  size  of  the 
type  face,  as  we  might  expect,  is  pronounced  by  the 
committee  "the  most  important  factor  in  the  in 
fluence  of  books  upon  vision" ;  it  describes  its  recom 
mended  sizes  in  millimetres — a  refinement  which,  for 
the  purposes  of  this  article,  need  not  be  insisted 
upon.  Briefly,  the  sizes  run  from  thirty-point,  for 
seven-year-old  children,  to  ten-point  or  eleven-point, 
for  persons  more  than  twelve  years  old.  Except  as 
an  inference  from  this  last  recommendation,  the  com 
mittee,  of  course,  does  not  exceed  its  province  by 
treating  of  type-sizes  for  adults;  yet  it  would  seem 
that  it  considers  ten-point  as  the  smallest  size  fit  for 
anyone,  however  good  his  sight.  This  would  bar 
much  of  our  existing  reading  matter. 

A  writer  whose  efforts  in  behalf  of  sane  typo 
graphy  have  had  practical  results  is  Professor  Koop- 
man,  librarian  of  Brown  University,  whose  plea  has 
been  addressed  chiefly  to  printers.  Professor  Koop- 
man  dwells  particularly  on  the  influence  of  short 
lines  on  legibility.  The  eye  must  jump  from  the  end 
of  each  line  back  to  the  beginning  of  the  next,  and 
this  jump  is  shorter  and  less  fatiguing  with  the 
shorter  line,  though  it  must  be  oftener  performed. 
Owing  largely  to  his  demonstration,  "The  Printing 
Art,"  a  trade  magazine  published  in  Cambridge,  Mas 
sachusetts,  has  changed  its  make-up  from  a  one- 
column  to  a  two-column  page.  It  should  be  noted, 
however,  that  a  uniform,  standard  length  of  line  is 
even  more  to  be  desired  than  a  short  one.  When  the 


BOOKS    FOE    TIRED    EYES  SOU 

eye  has  become  accustomed  to  one  length  for  its 
linear  leaps,  these  leaps  can  be  performed  with  re 
lative  ease  and  can  be  taken  care  of  subconsciously. 
When  the  lengths  vary  capriciously  from  one  book, 
or  magazine,  to  another,  or  even  from  one  page  to 
another,  as  they  so  often  do,  the  effort  to  get  accus 
tomed  to,  the  new  length  is  more  tiring  than  we 
realize.  Probably  this  factor,  next  to  the  size  of  type, 
is  most  effective  in  tiring  the  middle-aged  eye,  and 
in  keeping  it  tired.  The  opinion  may  be  ventured 
that  the  reason  for  our  continued  toleration  of  the 
small  type  used  in  the  daily  newspapers  is  that  their 
columns  are  narrow,  and  still  more,  that  these  are 
everywhere  of  practically  uniform  width. 

The  indifference  of  publishers  to  the  important 
feature  of  the  physical  make-up  of  books  appears 
from  the  fact  that  in  not  a  single  case  is  it  included 
among  the  descriptive  items  in  their  catalogue  en 
tries.  Libraries  are  in  precisely  the  same  class  of 
offenders.  A  reader  or  a  possible  purchaser  of  books 
is  supposed  to  be  interested  in  the  fact  that  a  book 
is  published  in  Boston,  lias  four  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  pages,  and  is  illustrated,  but  not  at  all  in  its 
legibility.  Neither  publishers  nor  libraries  have  any 
way  of  getting  information  on  the  subject,  except  by 
going  to  the  books  themselves.  Occasionally  a  re 
mainder-catalogue,  containing  bargains  whose 
charms  it  is  desired  to  set  forth  with  unusual  detail, 
states  that  a  certain  book  is  in  "large  type,"  or  even 
in  "fine,  large  type,"  but  these  words  are  nowhere 
defined,  and  the  purchaser  cannot  depend  on  their 
accuracy.  An  edition  of  Scott,  recently  advertised 
extensively  as  in  "large,  clear  type,"  proved  on  ex- 
ami  nation  to  be  printed  in  ten-point. 

Tn  gathering  the  large-type  collection  for  the  St. 
Louis  Library  fourteen -point  was  decided  upon  as  the 


310  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

standard,  which  means,  of  course,  types  with  a  face 
somewhere  between  the  smallest  size  that  is  usually 
found  on  a  fourteen-point  body,  even  if  actually  on  a 
smaller  body,  and  the  largest  that  this  can  carry, 
even  if  on  a  larger  body.  The  latter  is  unusually 
large,  but  it  would  not  do  to  place  the  standard  be 
low  fourteen-point,  because  that  would  lower  the 
minimum,  which  is  none  too  large  as  it  is.  The  first 
effort  was  to  collect  such  large-type  books,  already 
in  the  library,  as  would  be  likely  to  interest  the 
general  reader.  In  the  collection  of  nearly  400,000 
volumes,  it  was  found  by  diligent  search  that  only 
150  would  answer  this  description.  Most  octavo 
volumes  of  travel  are  in  large  type,  but  only  a  selec 
ted-  number  of  these  was  placed  in  the  collection,  to 
avoid  overloading  it  with  this  particular  class.  This 
statement  applies  also  to  some  other  classes,  and  to 
certain  types  of  books,  such  as  some  government  re 
ports  and  some  scientific  monographs,  which  have  no 
representatives  in  the  group.  The  next  step  was  to 
supplement  the  collection  by  purchase.  All  avail 
able  publishers'  catalogues  were  examined,  but  after 
a  period  of  twelve  months  it  was  found  possible  to 
spend  only  $65.00  in  the  purchase  of  120  additional 
books.  A  circular  letter  was  then  sent  to  ninety-two 
publishers,  explaining  the  purpose  of  the  collection 
and  asking  for  information  regarding  books  in  four 
teen-point  type,  or  larger,  issued  by  them.  To  these 
there  were  received  sixty-three  answers.  In  twenty- 
nine  instances,  no  books  in  type  of  this  size  were 
issued  by  the  recipients  of  the  circulars.  In  six  cases, 
the  answer  included  brief  lists  of  from  two  to  twelve 
titles  of  large-type  books;  and  in  several  other  cases, 
the  publishers  stated  that  the  labor  of  ascertaining 
which  of  their  publications  are  in  large  type  would 
be  prohibitive,  as  it  would  involve  actual  inspection 
of  each  and  everv  volume  on  their  lists.  In  two  in- 


BOOKS    FOR    TIRED    EYES  311 

stances,  however,  after  a  second  letter,  explaining 
further  the  aims  of  the  collection,  publishers 
promised  to  undertake  the  work.  The  final  result  has 
been  that  the  Library  now  has  over  four  hundred 
volumes  in  the  collection.  This  is  surely  not  an  im 
posing  number,  but  it  appears  to  represent  the  avail 
able  resources  of  a  country  in  which  1,000  publishers 
are  annually  issuing  11,000  volumes — to  say  nothing 
of  the  British  and  Continental  output.  In  the  list 
of  the  collection  and  in  the  entries,  the  size  of  the 
type,  the  leading,  and  the  size  of  the  book  itself  are 
to  be  distinctly  stated.  The  last-mentioned  item  is 
necessary  because  the  use  of  large  type  sometimes  in 
volves  a  heavy  volume,  awkward  to  hold  in  the  hand. 
The  collection  for  adults  in  the  St.  Louis  Library, 
as  it  now  exists,  may  be  divided  into  the  following 
classes,  according  to  the  reasons  that  seem  to  have 
prompted  the  use  of  large  type: 

1.  Large  books  printed  on  a  somewhat  generous 
scale  and  intended  to  sell  at  a  high  price,  the  size  of 
the  type  being  merely  incidental  to  this  plan.     These 
include   books   of   travel,    history,    or    biography    in 
several  volumes,  somewhat  high-priced  sets  of  stand 
ard  authors,  and  books  intended  for  gifts. 

2.  Books  containing  so  little  material  that  large 
type,  thick  paper,  and  wide  margins  were  necessary 
to  make  a  volume  easy  to  handle  and  use.    These  in 
clude  many  short  stories  of  magazine  length,  which 
for  some  inscrutable  reason  are  now  often  issued  in 
separate  form. 

3.  Books    printed    in    large    type    for    aesthetic 
reasons.    These  are  few,  beauty  and  artistic  form  be 
ing  apparently  linked  in  some  way  with  illegibility 
by  many  printers,  no  matter  what  the  size  of  the 
type-face. 

The   large-type   collection    is   used,    not   only   by 


312  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

elderly  persons,  but  also  in  greater  number  by  young 
persons  whose  oculists  forbid  them  to  read  fine 
print,  or  who  do  not  desire  to  wear  glasses.  The 
absence  of  a  wide  range  in  the  collection  drives  others 
away  to  books  that  are,  doubtless,  in  many  cases  bad 
for  their  eyes.  Some  books  that  have  not  been 
popular  in  the  general  collection  have  done  well  here, 
while  old  favorites  have  not  been  taken  out.  Such 
facts  as  these  mean  little  with  so  limited  a  collection. 
Until  readers  awake  to  the  dangers  of  small  print  and 
the  comfort  of  large  type  there  will  not  be  sufficient 
pressure  on  our  publishers  to  induce  them  to  put 
forth  more  books  suitable  for  tired  eyes.  It  is  pro 
bably  too  much  to  expect  that  the  trade  itself  will 
try  to  push  literature  whose  printed  form  obeys  the 
rules  of  ocular  hygiene.  All  that  we  can  reasonably 
ask  is  that  type-size  shall  be  reported  on  in  catalo 
gues,  so  that  those  who  want  books  in  large  type  may 
know  what  is  obtainable  and  where  to  go  for  it. 

It  has  often  been  noted  that  physicians  are  the 
only  class  of  professional  men  whose  activities,  if 
properly  carried  on,  tend  directly  to  make  the  profes 
sion  unnecessary.  Medicine  tends  more  and  more  to 
be  preventive  rather  than  curative.  We  must  there 
fore  look  to  the  oculists  to  take  the  first  steps  to 
wards  lessening  the  number  of  their  prospective 
patients  by  inculcating  rational  notions  about  the 
effects  of  the  printed  page  on  the  eye.  Teachers,  li 
brarians,  parents,  the  press — all  can  do  their  part. 
And  when  a  demand  for  larger  print  has  thus  been 
created  the  trade  will  respond.  Meanwhile,  libraries 
should  be  unremitting  in  their  efforts  to  ascertain 
what  material  in  large  type  already  exists,  to  col 
lect  it,  and  to  call  attention  to  it  in  every  legitimate 
way. 


THE  MAGIC  CASEMENT* 

Anyone  who  talks  or  writes  about  the  "movies"  is 
likely  to  be  misunderstood.  There  is  little  to  be  said 
now  about  the  moving  picture  as  a  moving  picture, 
unless  one  wants  to  discuss  its  optics  or  mechanics. 
The  time  is  past  when  anyone  went  to  see  a  moving 
picture  as  a  curiosity.  It  was  once  the  eighth  wonder 
of  the  world;  it  long  ago  abdicated  that  position  to 
join  its  dispossessed  brothers  the  telephone,  the  X- 
ray,  the  wireless  telegraph  and  the  phonograph. 
What  we  nowT  go  to  see  is  not  the  moving  picture,  but 
what  the  moving  picture  shows  us;  it  is  no  more  than 
a  window  through  which  we  gaze — the  poet's  "magic 
casement"  opening  (sometimes)  "on  the  foam  of 
perilous  seas."  We  may  no  more  praise  or  condemn 
the  moving  picture  for  what  it  shows  us  than  we  may 
praise  or  condemn  a  proscenium  arch  or  the  glass  in 
a  show  window. 

The  critic  who  thinks  that  the  movies  are  lowering 
our  tastes,  or  doing  anything  else  objectionable,  as 
well  as  he  who  thinks  they  are  educating  the  masses, 
is  not  of  the  opinion  that  the  moving  pictures  are 
doing  these  things  because  they  show  moving  objects 
on  a  screen,  but  because  of  the  character  of  what  is 
photographed  for  such  exhibition. 

Thoughts  on  the  movies,  therefore,  must  be  rather 
thoughts  on  things  that  are  currently  shown  us  by 
means  of  the  movies;  thoughts  also  on  some  of  the 
things  that  we  might  see  and  do  not.  I  have  com 
pared  the  screen  above  to  a  proscenium  arch  and  a 

*  Read    before    the    Town    and    Gown    Club,    St.    Louis. 


314  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SIIKLF 

show  window,  but  both  of  these  are  selective :  the 
screen  is  as  broad  as  the  world.  It  is  especially 
adapted  to  show  realities ;  through  it  one  may  see  the 
coast  of  Dalniatia  as  viewed  from  a  steamer,  the  hab 
its  of  animals  in  the  African  jungle,  or  the  play  of 
emotion  on  the  faces  of  an  audience  at  a  ball  game  in 
Philadelphia.  I  am  pleased  to  see  that  more  and 
more  of  these  interesting  realities  are  shown  daily  in 
the  movie  theatres.  There  lias  been  a  determined 
effort  to  make  them  unpopular  by  calling  them  "ed 
ucational/'  but  they  seem  likely  to  outlive  it.  One  is 
educated,  of  course,  by  everything  that  he  sees  or 
does,  but  why  rub  it  in?  The  boy  who  thoroughly 
likes  to  go  sailing  will  get  more  out  of  it  than  he  who 
goes  because  he  thinks  it  will  be  "an  educational  ex 
perience."  As  one  who  goes  to  the  movies  I  confess 
that  I  enjoy  its  realities.  Probably  they  educate  me, 
and  I  take  that  with  due  meekness.  Some  of  these 
realities  I  enjoy  because  they  are  unfamiliar,  like  the 
boiling  of  the  lava  lake  in  the  Hawaiian  craters  and 
the  changing  crowds  in  the  streets  of  Manila;  some 
because  they  are  familiar,  like  a  college  foot-ball 
game  or  the  movement  of  vessels  in  the  North  River 
at  New  York. 

I  like  the  realities,  too,  in  the  dramatic  perform 
ances  that  still  occupy  and  probably  will  continue  to 
occupy,  most  of  the  time  at  a  movie  theatre.  Here  I 
come  into  conflict  with  the  producer.  Like  every 
other  adapter  he  can  not  cut  loose  from  the  old  when 
he  essays  the  new.  We  no  longer  wear  swords,  but  we 
still  carry  the  buttons  for  the  sword  belt,  and  it  is 
only  recently  that  semi-tropic  Americans  gave  up  the 
dress  of  north-temperate  Europe.  So  the  movie  pro 
ducer  can  not  forget  the  theatre.  Now  the  theatre 
has  some  advantages  that  the  movie  can  never  attain 
—notably  the  use  of  speech.  The  movie,  on  the  other 


THE    MAGIC    CASEMENT  315 

hand,  has  unlimited  freedom  of  scene  and  the  use  of 
real  backgrounds.     We  do  not  object    to  a  certain 
amount  of  what  we  call  "staginess"  on  the  stage — it 
is  a  part  of  its  art;  as  the  pigment  is  part  of  that  of 
the  painter.    We  are  surrounded  by  symbols;  we  are 
not  surprised  that  costume,  gesture  and  voice  are  also 
symbolic  instead  of  purely  natural.     But  in  the  mov 
ing  picture  play  it  is,  or  should  be,  different.     The 
costume  and  make-up,  the  posture  and  gesture,  that 
seem  appropriate  in  front  of  a  painted  house  or  tree 
on  a  back-drop,  become  so  out-of-place  as  to  be  re 
pulsive  when  one  sees  them  in  front  of  a  real  house 
and  real  trees,  branches  moving  in  the  wind,  running 
water — all  the  familiar  accompaniments  of  nature. 
The  movie  producers,  being  unable  to  get  away  from 
their  stage  experience,  are  failing  to  grasp  their  op 
portunity.     Instead  of  creating  a  drama  of  reality  to 
correspond  with  the  real  environment  that  only  the 
movie  can  offer,  they  are  abandoning  the  unique  ad 
vantages  of  that  environment,  to  a  large  degree.  They 
build  fake  cities,  they  set  all  their  interiors  in  fake 
studio   rooms,   where  everything  is  imitation ;   even 
when  they  let  us  see  a  bit  of  outdoors,  it  is  not  what 
it  pretends  to  be.     We  have  all  seen,  on  the  screen, 
bluffs  200  feet  high  on  the  coast  of  Virginia  and  palm 
trees  growing  in  the  borough  of  the  Bronx.    And  they 
hire  stage  actors  to  interpret  the  stagiest    of  stage 
plots  in  as  stagy  a  way  as  they  know  how.    I  am  tak 
ing  the  movie  seriously  because  I  like  it  and  because 
I  see  that  I  share  that  liking  with  a  vast  throng  of 
persons  with  whom  it  is  probably  the  only  thing  I 
have  in  common — persons  separated  from  me  by  dif 
ferences  of  training  and  education  that  would  seem 
to  make  a  common  ground  of  any  kind  well-nigh  im 
possible.    With  some  persons  the  fact  that  the  movie 
is  democratic  puts  it  outside  the  pale  at  once.    Noth- 


31(>  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

ing,  in  their  estimation,  is  worth  discussing  unless 
appreciation  of  it  is  limited  to  the  few.  Their  atti 
tude  is  that  of  the  mother  wrho  said  to  the  nurse :  "Go 
and  see  what  baby  is  doing,  and  tell  him  he  musn't." 
"Let  us,"  the}-  say  "iind  out  what  people  like,  and 
then  try  to  make  them  like  something  else."  To  such 
I  have  nothing  to  say.  We  ought  rather,  I  believe,  to 
find  out  the  kind  of  thing  that  people  like  and  then 
do  our  best  to  see  that  they  get  it  in  the  best  quality— 
that  it  is  used  in  every  way  possible  to  pull  them  out 
of  the  mud,  instead  of  rubbing  their  noses  further  in. 
On  the  other  hand,  some  capable  critics,  like  Mr. 
Walter  Pritchard  Eaton,  decry  the  movies  because 
they  are  undemocratic — because  they  are  offering  a 
form  of  entertainment  appealing  only  to  the  unedu 
cated  and  thus  segregating  them  from  the  educated, 
Avho  presumably  all  attend  the  regular  theatre,  sit 
ting  in  the  parquet  at  two  dollars  per.  One  wonders 
whether  Mr.  Eaton  has  attended  a  moving-picture 
theatre  since  1903.  I  believe  the  movie  to  be  by  all 
odds  the  most  democratic  form  of  intellectual  (by 
which  I  mean  non-physical)  entertainment  ever  of 
fered;  and  I  base  my  belief  on  wide  observation  of 
audiences  in  theatres  of  many  different  grades.  Now 
this  democracy  shows  itself  not  only  in  the  composi 
tion  of  audiences  but  in  their  manifestations  of  ap 
proval.  I  do  not  mean  that  everyone  in  an  audience 
always  likes  the  same  thing.  Some  outrageous  "slap 
stick"  comedy  rejoices  one  and  offends  another.  A 
particularly  foolish  plot  may  satisfy  in  one  place 
while  it  bores  in  another.  But  everywhere  I  find  one 
tiling  that  appeals  to  everybody — realism.  Just  as 
soon  as  there  appears  on  the  screen  something  that 
does  not  know  how  to  pose  and  is  forced  by  nature  to 
be  natural — an  animal  or  a  young  child,  for  instance 
—there  are  immediate  manifestations  of  interest  and 
delight. 


THE    MAGIC    CASEMENT  3H 

The  least  "stagy"  actors  are  almost  always  favor 
ites.  Mary  Pickford  stands  at  the  head.  There  is 
not  an  ounce  of  staginess  in  her  make-up.  She  was 
never  particularly  successful  on  the  stage.  Some  of 
her  work  seems  to  me  ideal  acting  for  the  screen- 
simple,  appealing,  absolutely  true.  Of  course  she  is 
not  always  at  her  best. 

To  the  stage  illusions  that  depend  on  costume  and 
make-up,  the  screen  is  particularly  unfriendly.  Espe 
cially  in  the  "close-ups"  the  effect  is  similar  to  that 
which  one  would  have  if  he  were  standing  close  to 
the  actor  looking  directly  into  his  face.  It  is  useless 
to  depend  on  ordinary  make-up  under  these  circum 
stances.  Either  it  should  be  of  the  description  used 
by  Sherlock  Holmes  and  other  celebrated  detectives 
(we  rely  on  hearsay)  which  deceives  the  very  elect  at 
close  quarters,  or  else  the  producer  must  choose  for 
his  characters  those  that  naturally  "look  the  parts." 
In  particular,  the  lady  who,  although  long  past  forty, 
•ontimies  to  play  iiiycnue  parts  and  "gets  away  with 
it"  on  the  stage,  must  get  away  from  it,  when  it  comes 
to  the  screen.  The  "close  up"  tells  the  sad  story  at 
once.  The  part  of  a  sixteen-year-old  girl  must  be 
played  by  a  real  one.  Another  concession  to  realism, 
you  see.  And  what  is  true  of  persons  is  true  of  their 
environment.  I  have  already  registered  my  disap 
proval  of  the  "Universal  City"  type  of  production.  It 
is  almost  as  easy  for  the  expert  to  pick  out  the  fake 
Russian  village  or  the  pasteboard  Virginia  court 
house  as  it  is  for  him  to  spot  the  wrrinkles  in  the 
countenance  of  the  school  girl  who  left  school  in  1892. 
Next  to  a  fake  environment  the  patchwork  scene  en 
rages  one — the  railway  that  is  double-track  with  90- 
pound  rails  in  one  scene  and  single-track  with  streaks 
of  rust  in  the  next;  the  train  that  is  hauled  in  quick 
succession  by  locomotives  of  the  Mogul  type,  the  At 
lantic  and  the  wood-burning  vintage  of  1868.  There 


318  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

is  here  an  impudent  assumption  in  the  producer,  of  a 
lack  of  intelligence  in  his  audience,  that  is  quite  mad 
dening.  The  same  lack  of  correspondence  appears 
between  different  parts  of  the  same  street,  and  be 
tween  the  outside  and  inside  of  houses.  I  am  told  by 
friends  that  I  am  quite  unreasonable  in  the  extent  to 
which  I  carry  my  demands  for  realism  in  the  movies. 
"What  would  you  have?"  they  ask.  I  would  have  a 
producing  company  that  should  advertise,  "We  have 
no  studio"  and  use  only  real  backgrounds — the  actual 
localities  represented.  "Do  you  mean  to  tell  me,"  my 
friend  goes  on,  "that  you  would  carry  your  company 
to  Spain  whenever  the  scene  of  their  play  is  laid  in 
that  country?  The  expense  would  be  prohibitive."  I 
most  certainly  should  not,  and  this  because  of  the 
very  realism  that  I  am  advocating.  Plays  laid  in 
Spain  should  be  acted  not  only  in  Spain  but  by  Span 
iards.  The  most  objectionable  kind  of  fake  is  that  in 
which  Americans  are  made  to  do  duty  for  Spaniards, 
Hindus  or  Japanese  when  their  appearance,  action 
and  bearing  clearly  indicate  that  they  were  born  and 
brought  up  in  Skowhegan,  Maine  or  Crawfordsville, 
Indiana.  I  have  seen  Mary  Pickford  in  "Madame 
Butterfly",  and  I  testify  sadly  that  not  even  she  can 
succeed  here.  No ;  if  we  want  Spanish  plays  let  us 
use  those  made  on  Spanish  soil.  Let  us  have  free  in 
terchange  of  films  between  all  film-producing  coun 
tries.  All  the  change  required  would  be  translating 
the  captions,  or  better  still,  plays  might  be  produced 
that  require  no  captions.  This  might  mean  the  total 
reorganization  of  the  movie-play  business  in  this 
country — a  revolution  which  I  should  view  with 
equanimity.  Speaking  of  captions,  here  again  the 
average  producer  appears  to  agree  with  Walter 
Pritchard  Eaton  that  he  is  catering  only  to  the  uned 
ucated.  The  writers  of  most  captions  seem,  indeed, 


THE    MAGIC    CASEMENT  319 

to  have  abandoned  formal  instruction  in  the  primary 
school.  Why  should  not  a  movie  caption  be  good  lit 
erature?  Some  of  them  are.  The  Cabiria  captions 
were  fine:  though  I  do  not  admire  that  masterpiece. 
I  am  told  that  D'Annunzio  composed  them  with  care, 
and  equal  care  was  evidently  used  in  the  translation. 
The  captions  of  the  George  Ade  fables  are  uniformly 
good,  and  there  are  other  notable  exceptions.  Other 
places  where  knowledge  of  language  is  required  are 
inadequately  taken  care  of.  Letters  from  eminent 
persons  make  one  wrant  to  hide  under  the  chairs. 
These  persons  usually  sign  themselves  "Duke  of  Gan- 
dolfo"  or  "Secretary  of  State  Smith."  Are  grammar 
school  graduates  difficult  to  get,  or  high-priced?  I 
beg  you  to  observe  that  here  again  lack  of  realism  is 
my  objection. 

But  divers  friends  interpose  the  remark  that  the 
movies  are  already  too  realistic.  "They  leave  nothing 
to  the  imagination."  If  this  were  so,  it  wTere  a  griev 
ous  fault — at  any  rate  in  so  far  as  the  moving-picture 
play  aims  at  being  an  art-form.  All  good  art  leaves 
something  to  the  imagination.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  the  movie  is  the  exact  complement  of  the 
spoken  play  as  read  from  a  book.  Here  we  have  the 
words  in  full,  the  scene  and  action  being  left  to  the 
imagination  except  as  briefly  sketched  in  the  stage 
direction.  In  the  movie  we  have  scene  and  action  in 
full,  the  words  being  left  to  the  imagination  except 
as  briefly  indicated  in  the  captions.  Where  captions 
are  very  full  the  form  may  perhaps  be  said  to  be  com 
plementary  to  the  novel,  where  besides  the  words  we 
are  given  a  written  description  of  scene  and  action 
that  is  often  full  of  detail.  The  movie  leaves  just  as 
much  to  the  imagination  as  the  novel,  but  what  is  so 
left  is  different  in  the  two  cases.  Do  I  think  that 
everyone  in  a  movie  audience  makes  use  of  his  priv- 


320  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

ilege  to  imagine  what  the  actors  are  saying?  No; 
neither  does  the  novel-reader  always  image  the  scene 
and  action.  This  does  not  depend  on  ignorance  or 
the  reverse,  but  on  imaging  power.  Exceptional 
visual  and  auditive  imaging  power  are  rarely  present 
in  the  same  individual.  I  happen  to  have  the  former. 
I  automatically  see  everything  of  which  I  read  in  a 
novel,  and  when  the  descriptions  are  not  detailed,  this 
gets  me  into  trouble.  On  a  second  reading  my  imaged 
background  may  be  different  and  when  the  earlier 
one  asserts  itself  there  is  a  conflict  that  I  can  com 
pare  only  to  hearing  two  tunes  played  at  once.  Per 
sons  having  already  good  visual  imaging  power 
should  develop  their  auditive  imaging  power  by  going 
to  the  movies  and  hearing  what  the  actors  say ;  these 
with  deficient  visual  imagery  should  read  novels  and 
see  the  scenery.  But  to  say  that  the  movies  allow  no 
scope  for  the  imagination  is  absurd.  As  I  said  at  the 
outset,  the  movie  play  is  just  a  play  seen  through 
the  medium  of  a  moving  picture.  It  is  like  seeing  a 
drama  near  enough  to  note  the  slightest  play  of 
feature  and  at  the  same  time  so  far  away  that  the 
actors  can  not  be  heard — somewhat  like  seeing  a  dis 
tant  play  through  a  fine  telescope.  The  action  should 
therefore  differ  in  no  respect  from  what  would  be 
proper  if  the  words  were  intended  to  be  heard. 
Doubtless  this  imposes  a  special  duty  upon  both  the 
author  of  the  scenario  and  the  producer,  and  they  do 
not  always  respond  to  it.  Action  is  introduced  that 
fails  to  be  intelligible  without  the  words,  and  to  clear 
it  up  the  actors  are  made  to  use  pantomime.  Panto 
mime  is  an  interesting  and  valuable  form  of  dramatic 
art,  but  it  is  essentially  symbolic  and  stagy  and  has, 
I  believe,  no  place  in  the  moving  picture  play  as  we 
have  developed  it.  If  owing  to  the  faulty  construc 
tion  of  the  play,  or  a  lack  of  skill  on  the  part  of  pro- 


THE    MAGIC    CASEMENT  321 

ducer  or  actors,  all  sorts  of  gestures  and  grimaces  be 
come  necessary  that  would  not  be  required  if  the 
words  were  heard,  the  production  can  not  be  consid 
ered  good.  Sometimes,  of  course,  words  are  seen; 
though  not  heard.  The  story  of  the  deaf  mutes  who 
read  the  lips  of  the  movie  actors,  and  detected  re 
marks  not  at  all  in  consonance  with  the  action  of  the 
play,  is  doubtless  familiar.  It  crops  up  in  various 
places  and  is  as  ubiquitous  as  Washington's  Head 
quarters.  It  is  good  enough  to  be  true,  but  I  have 
never  run  it  to  earth  yet.  Even  those  of  us  who  are 
not  deaf-mutes,  however,  may  detect  an  exclamation 
now  and  then  and  it  gives  great  force  to  the  action, 
though  I  doubt  whether  it  is  quite  legitimate  in  a 
purely  picture-play. 

I  beg  leave  to  doubt  whether  realism  is  fostered  by 
a  method  of  production  said  to  be  in  vogue  among 
first  rate  producers;  namely  keeping  actors  in  igno 
rance  of  the  play  and  directing  the  action  as  it  goes 
on. 

"Come  in  now,  Mr.  Smith ;  sit  in  that  chair ;  cross 
your  legs;  light  a  cigar;  register  perplexity;  you  hear 
a  sound;  jump  to  your  feet" — and  so  on.  This  may 
save  the  producer  trouble,  but  it  reduces  the  actors  to 
marionettes;  it  is  not  thus  that  masterpieces  are 
turned  out. 

Is  there  any  chance  of  a  movie  masterpiece,  any 
way?  Yes,  but  not  in  the  direction  that  most  pro 
ducers  see  it.  What  Vachell  Lindsay  calls  "Splen 
dor"  in  the  movies  is  an  interesting  and  striking 
feature  of  them — the  moving  of  masses  of  people 
arnid  great  architectural  construction — sieges,  tri 
umphs,  battles,  mobs —  but  all  this  is  akin  to  scen 
ery.  Its  movements  are  like  those  of  the  trees  or  the 
surf.  One  can  not  make  a  play  entirely  of  scenery, 
though  the  contrary  seems  to  be  the  view  of  some 


322  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

managers,  even  on  the  stage  of  the  regular  theatre. 
So  far,  the  individual  acting  and  plot  construction  in 
the  great  spectacular  movies  has  been  poor.  It  was 
notably  so,  it  seems  to  me  in  the  Birth  of  a  Nation 
and  not  much  better  in  Cabiria.  Judith  of  Bethulia 
(after  T.  B.  Aldrich)  is  the  best  acted  "splendor" 
play  that  I  have  seen.  Masterpieces  are  coming  not 
through  spending  millions  on  supes,  and  "real"  tem 
ples,  and  forts ;  but  rather  by  writing  a  scenario  par 
ticularly  adapted  to  film-production,  hiring  and 
training  actors  that  know  how  to  act  for  the  camera, 
preferably  those  without  bad  stage  habits  to  unlearn, 
cutting  out  all  unreal  scenery,  costume  and  make-up 
and  keeping  everything  as  simple  and  as  close  to  the 
actual  as  possible.  The  best  movie  play  I  ever  saw 
was  in  a  ten-cent  theatre  in  St.  Louis.  It  was  a 
dramatization  of  Frank  Norris's  "McTeague."  I  have 
never  seen  it  advertised  anywhere,  and  I  never  heard 
of  the  actors,  before  or  since.  But  most  of  it  was 
fine,  sincere  work,  and  seeing  it  made  me  feel  that 
there  is  a  future  for  the  movie  play. 

One  trouble  is  that  up  to  date,  neither  producers 
nor  actors  nor  the  most  intelligent  and  best  educated 
part  of  the  audience  take  the  movies  seriously.  Here 
is  one  of  the  marvels  of  modern  times ;  something  that 
has  captured  the  public  as  it  never  was  captured  be 
fore.  And  yet  most  of  us  look  at  it  as  a  huge  joke,  or 
as  something  intended  to  entertain  the  populace,  at 
which  we,  too  are  graciously  pleased  to  be  amused. 
It  might  mend  matters  if  we  could  have  every  day  in 
some  reputable  paper  a  column  of  readable  serious 
stuff  about  the  current  movie  plays — real  criticism, 
not  simply  the  producer's  "blurb." 

Possibly,  too,  a  partnership  between  the  legiti 
mate  stage  and  the  movie  may  be  possible  and  I  shall 


THE    MAGIC    CASEMENT  32;j 

devote  to  a  somewhat  wild  scheme  of  this  sort  the  few- 
pages  that  remain  to  me.  To  begin  with,  the  freedom 
enjoyed  by  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  from  the  lim 
itations  imposed  by  realistic  scenery  has  not  been  suf 
ficiently  insisted  upon  as  an  element  in  their  art. 
Theirs  was  a  true  drame  libre,  having  its  analogies 
with  the  present  attempts  of  the  vers-librists  to  free 
poetry  from  its  restrictions  of  rhyme  and  metre.  But 
while  the  tendency  of  poetry  has  always  been  away 
from  its  restrictions,  the  mise-en-scene  in  the  drama 
has  continually,  with  the  attempts  to  make  it  con 
form  to  nature,  tightened  its  throttling  bands  on  the 
real  vitality  of  the  stage. 

Those  who  periodically  wonder  why  the  dramat 
ists  of  the  Elizabethan  age — the  greatest  productive 
period  in  the  history  of  the  English  stage — no  longer 
hold  the  stage,  with  the  exception  of  Shakespeare, 
and  who  lament  that  even  Shakespeare  is  yielding  his 
traditional  place,  have  apparently  given  little 
thought  to  this  loss  of  freedom  as  a  contributing 
cause.  While  the  writers  of  vcrs  libre  have  so  far 
freed  themselves  that  some  of  them  have  ceased  to 
write  poetry  at  all,  it  is  a  question  whether  the  scenic 
freedom  of  the  old  dramatists  may  not  have  played 
such  a  vital  part  in  the  development  of  their  art,  that 
they  owed  to  it  at  least  some  of  their  pre-eminence. 

Shakespeare's  plays,  as  Shakespeare  wrote  them, 
read  better  than  they  act.  Hundreds  of  Shakespeare- 
lovers  have  reached  this  conclusion,  and  many  more 
have  reached  it  than  have  dared  to  put  it  into  words. 
The  reason  is,  it  seems  to  me,  that  we  can  not,  on  the 
modern  stage,  enact  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  as  he 
intended  them  to  be  acted — as  he  really  wrote  them. 

If  we  compare  an  acting  edition  of  any  of  the 
plays  with  the  text  as  presented  by  any  good  editor, 


324  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

this  becomes  increasingly  clear.  Shakespeare  in  his 
original  garb,  is  simply  impossible  for  the  modern 
stage. 

The  fact  that  the  Elizabethan  plays  were  given 
against  an  imaginary  back-ground  enabled  the  play 
wright  to  disregard  the  old,  hampering  unity  of  place 
more  thoroughly  than  has  ever  been  possible  since  his 
time.  His  ability  to  do  so,  was  the  result  not  of  any 
reasoned  determination  to  set  his  plays  without 
"scenery,"  but  simply  of  environment.  As  the  scenic 
art  progressed,  the  backgrounds  became  more  and 
more  realistic  and  less  and  less  imaginary.  The 
imagination  of  the  audience,  however,  has  always 
been  more  or  less  requisite  to  the  appreciation  of 
drama,  as  of  any  other  art.  No  stage  tree  or  house 
has  ever  been  close  enough  to  its  original  to  deceive 
the  onlooker.  He  always  knows  that  they  are  imita 
tions,  intended  only  to  aid  the  imagination,  and  his 
imagination  has  ajways  been  obliged  to  do  its  part. 
In  Shakespeare's  time  the  imagination  did  all  the 
work;  and  as  imaginary  houses  and  trees  have  no 
weight,  the  services  of  the  scene-shifter  were  not  re 
quired  to  remove  them  and  to  substitute  others.  The 
scene  could  be  shifted  at  once  from  a  battlefield  in 
Flanders  to  a  palace  in  London  and  after  the  briefest 
of  dialogues  it  could  change  again  to  a  street  in 
Genoa — all  without  inconveniencing  anyone  or  neces 
sitating  a  halt  in  the  presentation  of  the  drama.  Any 
reflective  reader  of  Shakespeare  will  agree,  I  think, 
that  this  ability  to  shift  scenes,  which  after  all,  is 
only  that  which  the  novelist  or  poet  has  always  pos 
sessed  and  still  possesses,  enables  the  dramatist  to 
impart  a  breadth  of  view  that  was  impossible  under 
the  ideas  of  unity  that  governed  the  drama  of  the 
Ancients.  Greek  tragedy  was  drama  in  concentra 
tion,  a  tabloid  of  intense  power — a  brilliant  light  fo- 


THE    MAGIC    CASEMENT  325 

cussed  on  a  single  spot  of  passion  or  exaltation.  The 
Elizabethan  drama  is  a  view  of  life ;  and  life  does  not 
focus,  it  is  diffuse — a  congeries  of  episodes,  successive 
or  simultaneous — something  not  re-producible  by  the 
ancient  dramatic  methods. 

To-day,  while  we  have  not  gone  back  to  the  terrific 
force  of  the  Greek  unified  presentation,  we  have  lost 
this  breadth.  We  strive  for  it,  but  we  can  no  longer 
reach  it  because  of  the  growth  of  an  idea  that  realism 
in  mise-en-scene  is  absolutely  necessary.  Of  course 
this  idea  has  been  injurious  to  the  drama  in  more 
ways  than  the  one  that  we  are  now  considering.  The 
notable  reform  in  stage  settings  associated  with  the 
names  of  Gordon  Craig,  Granville  Barker,  Urban, 
Hume  and  others,  arises  from  a  conviction  that  mise- 
en-scene  should  inspire  and  reflect  a  mood — should 
furnish  an  atmosphere,  rather  than  attempt  to  repro 
duce  realistic  details.  To  a  certain  extent  these  re 
forms  also  operate  to  simplify  stage  settings  and 
hence  to  make  a  little  more  possible  the  quick  transi 
tions  and  the  play  of  viewpoint  which  I  regard  as  one 
of  the  glories  of  the  Elizabethan  drama.  This  sim 
plification,  however,  is  very  far  from  a  return  to  the 
absolute  simplicity  of  the  Elizabethan  setting.  More 
over,  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  temper  of  the  modern 
audience  is  favorable  to  a  great  change  in  this  direc 
tion.  We  live  in  an  age  of  realistic  detail  and  we 
must  yield  to  the  current,  while  using  it,  so  far  as 
possible,  to  gain  our  ends. 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  certainly  interesting  to 
find  that,  entirely  without  the  aid  or  consent  of  those 
who  have  at  heart  the  interests  of  the  drama,  a  new 
dramatic  form  has  grown  up  which  caters  to  the  ut 
most  to  the  modern  desire  for  realistic  detail — far  be 
yond  the  dreams  of  ordinary  stage  settings — and  at 
the  same  time  makes  possible  the  quick  transitions 


326  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    8HELF 

that  are  the  glory  of  the  Elizabethan  drama.     Here, 
of  course,  is  where  we  make  connection  with  the  mov 
ing  picture,  whose  fascinating  realism  and  freedom 
from  the  taint  of  the  footlights  have    perhaps  been 
sufficiently  insisted  upon  in  what  has  been  already 
said.     In  the  moving  picture,  with  the  possibility  of 
realistic  backgrounds  such  as  no  skill,  no  money,  no 
opportunity  could  build  up  on  the  ordinary  stage- 
distant  prospects,  marvels    of  architecture,    waving 
trees  and  moving  animals — comes  the  ability  of  pass 
ing  from  one  environment  to  another,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  globe  perhaps,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye. 
The  transitions  of  the  Elizabethan  stage  sink  into  in 
significance  beside  the  possibilities    of    the  moving- 
picture  screen.     Such  an  alternation  as  is  now  com 
mon  in  the  film  play,  where  two  characters,  talking 
to  each  other  over  the  telephone,  are  seen  in  quick 
succession,    would    be    impossible    on    the    ordinary 
stage.     The  Elizabethan  auditor,  if  his  imagination 
were  vivid  and  ready,  might  picture    such  a  back 
ground  of  castle  or  palace  or  rocky  coast  as  no  pho- 
tographer  could  produce;  but  even  such  imagination 
takes  time  to  get  under  way,    whereas    the    screen- 
picture  gets  to  the  brain  through  the  retina  instantly. 
It  is  worth  our  while,  I  think,  to  consider  whether 
this  kind  of  scenery,  rich  in  detail,  but  immaterial 
and  therefore  devoid  of  weight,  could  not  be  used  in 
connection  with  the  ordinary  drama.     There  are  ob 
stacles,  but  they  do  not    appear    insuperable.     The 
ordinary  moving-picture,  of  course,  is  much  smaller 
than  the  back  drop  of  a  large  stage.    Its  enlargement 
is  merely  a  matter  of  optical  apparatus.    Wings  must 
be  reduced  in  number  and  provided  each  with  its  own 
projection-machine,  or  replaced  with  drops  similarly 
provided.     Exits  and  entrances  must    be    managed 
somewhat  differently  than    with    ordinary    scenery. 


THE    MAGIC    CASEMENT  327 

All  this  is  surely  iiot  beyond  the  power  of  modem 
stagecraft,  which  has  already  surmounted  such  ob 
stacles  and  accomplished  such  wonders.  The  projec 
tion,  it  is  unnecessary  to  say,  must  be  from  behind, 
not  from  before,  to  avoid  throwing  the  actors'  shad 
ows  on  the  scenery.  There  must  still,  of  course,  be 
lighting  from  the  front,  and  the  shadow  problem  still 
exists,  but  no  more  than  it  does  with  ordinary  scen 
ery.  Its  solution  lies  in  diffusing  the  light.  No  spot 
light  could  be  used,  and  its  enforced  absence  would 
be  one  of  the  incidental  blessings  of  the  moving  scene. 

The  advantages  of  this  moving-picture  scenery 
would  be  many  and  obvious.  Prominent  among  them 
of  course  are  fidelity  to  nature  and  richness  of  detail. 
The  one,  however,  on  which  I  desire  to  lay  stress  here 
is  the  flexibility  in  change  of  scene  that  we  have  lost 
with  the  introduction  of  heavy  material  "scenery  v  on 
our  stages.  This  flexibility  would  be  regained  with 
out  the  necessity  of  discarding  scenery  altogether  and 
going  back  to  the  Elizabethan  reliance  on  the  imagi 
nation  of  the  audience. 

Of  course,  moving  scenery  would  not  be  required 
or  desired  in  all  dramatic  productions — only  in  those 
where  realistic  detail  combined  with  perfect  flexibil 
ity  and  rapidity  of  change"  in  scene  seems  to  be  in 
dicated.  The  scenery  should  of  course  be  colored, 
and  while  we  are  waiting  for  the  commercial  tri- 
chroic  picture  with  absolutely  true  values,  we  may 
&et  along  very  well  with  the  di-chroic  ones,  such  as 
those  turned  out  with  the  so-called  Kineinacolor 
process.  Those  who  saw  the  wonderful  screen  repro 
duction  of  the  Indian  durbar,  several  years  ago,  will 
realize  the  possibilities. 

And  more  than  all  else,  may  we  not  hope  that 
tf  lese  new  backgrounds  may  react  on  the  players  who 
perform  their  parts  in  front  of  them?  Not  neces- 


328  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

sarily ;  for  we  have  seen  that  it  does  not  always  do  so 
in  the  present  movie  play.  But  I  am  confident  that 
the  change  will  come.  Little  by  little  the  necessities 
of  the  case  are  developing  actors  who  act  naturally. 
One  may  pose  in  a  canoe  on  a  painted  rapid ;  but  how 
can  he  do  so  in  the  real  water  course,  where  every 
attitude,  every  play  of  the  muscles  must  be  adapted 
to  the  real  propulsion  of  the  boat? 

In  short,  the  movie  may  ultimately  require  its 
presenters  to  be  real,  and  so  may  come  a  school  of 
realism  in  acting  that  may  have  its  uses  on  the  legiti 
mate  stage  also. 

Who  will  be  the  first  manager  to  experiment  with 
this  new  adjunct  to  the  art  of  the  stage? 


A  WOKD   TO   BELIEVERS* 

People  may  be  divided  into  a  great  many  different 
classes  according  to  their  attitude  toward  belief  and 
beliefs — toward  the  meaning  and  value  of  belief  in 
general — toward  their  own  beliefs  and  those  of  their 
neighbors.  We  have  the  man  who  does  not  know 
what  "belief"  means,  and  who  does  not  care ;  the  man 
whose  idea  of  its  meaning  is  perverse  and  wrong ;  the 
man  who  thinks  his  own  beliefs  are  important  and 
those  of  his  neighbors  are  unimportant;  the  man  who 
thinks  it  proper  to  base  belief  on  certain  considera 
tions  and  not  on  others — the  man,  for  instance,  who 
will  say  he  believes  that  two  plus  two  equals  four,  but 
can  not  believe  in  the  existence  of  God  because  the 
grounds  for  such  belief  can  not  be  stated  in  the  same 
mathematical  symbols.  These  are  only  a  few  of  the 
classes  that  might  be  defined,  using  this  interesting 
basis  of  classification.  But  before  we  can  take  up  the 
question  of  instruction  in  the  church's  beliefs,  about 
which  I  have  been  asked  to  address  you  this  evening, 
we  must  recognize  the  existence  of  these  classes,  and 
possibly  the  fact  that  you  yourselves  are  not  all  in 
accord  in  the  way  in  which  you  look  at  the  subject. 

What  I  shall  say  is  largely  personal  and  you  must 
not  look  upon  me  as  representing  anybody  or  any 
thing.  I  may  even  fail  to  agree  with  some  of  the  in 
struction  that  you  have  received  in  this  interesting 
and  valuable  course.  But  I  do  speak,  of  course,  as 
one  who  loves  our  church  and  as  a  loyal  and  I  hope  a 
thoughtful  layman. 

*  Address   at   the   closing   session    of   the   Church    School    of    Religious   In- 
etruction,    St.   Louis. 


330  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

First,  what  is  belief?  We  surely  give  the  word  a 
wide  range  of  values.  A  man  says  that  he  believes  in 
his  own  existence,  which  the  philosopher  Descartes 
said  was  the  most  sure  thing  in  the  world — "Cogito, 
ergo  sum."  He  also  says  that  he  believes  it  will  rain 
to-morrow.  What  can  there  be  in  common  between 
these  two  acts  of  faith?  Between  a  certainty  and  a 
fift}7  per  cent  chance,  or  less?  This — that  a  man  is 
always  willing  to  act  on  his  beliefs;  if  not,  they  are 
not  beliefs  within  the  meaning  of  this  address.  If 
you  believe  it  will  rain,  you  take  an  umbrella.  Your 
doing  so  is  quite  independent  of  the  grounds  for  your 
belief.  There  may  really  be  very  little  chance  of  its 
raining ;  but  it  is  your  belief  that  causes  your  action, 
no  matter  whether  it  is  justified  or  not.  You  could 
not  act  more  decisively  if  you  were  acting  on  the  cer 
tainty  of  your  own  existence.  It  is  this  willingness 
to  act  that  unifies  our  beliefs — that  gives  them  value. 
If  I  heard  a  man  declare  his  belief  that  a  fierce  wild 
animal  was  on  his  track,  and  if  I  then  saw  him  calmly 
lie  down  and  go  to  sleep  on  the  trail,  I  should  know 
that  he  was  either  insane  or  a  liar. 

I  have  intimated  above  that  belief  may  or  may  not 
be  based  on  mathematical  certainty.  Fill  up  a  basket 
with  black  and  white  pebbles  and  then  draw  out  one. 
Let  us  create  a  situation  that  shall  make  it  imperative 
for  a  person  to  declare  whether  a  black  or  a  white 
pebble  will  be  drawn.  For  instance,  suppose  the 
event  to  be  controlled  by  an  oriental  despot  who  has 
given  orders  to  strike  off  the  man's  head  if  he  an 
nounces  the  wrong  color.  Of  course,  if  he  has  seen 
that  only  white  pebbles  went  into  the  basket  he  says 
boldly  "White/'  That  is  certainty.  But  suppose  he 
saw  one  black  pebble  in  the  mass.  Does  he  any  the  less 
say  "White"?  That  one  black  pebble  represents  a 
tiny  doubt;  does  it  affect  the  direction  of  his  en- 


A    WORD    TO    BELIEVERS  331 

forced  action?  Suppose  there  were  two  black  peb 
bles;  or  a  handful.  Suppose  nearly  half  the  pebbles 
were  black?  Would  that  make  the  slightest  differ 
ence  about  what  he  would  do?  If  you  judge  a 
man's  belief  by  what  he  does,  as  I  think  you  should 
do,  that  belief  may  admit  of  a  good  deal  of  doubt  be 
fore  it  is  nullified.  Are  your  beliefs  all  based  on 
mathematical  certainties?  I  hope  not;  for  then 
they  must  be  few  indeed. 

That  many  of  our  fellow  men  have  a  wrong  con 
ception  of  belief  is  a  very  sad  fact.  The  idea  that  it 
must  be  based  on  a  mathematical  demonstration  of 
certainty,  or  even  that  it  must  be  free  from  doubt  is 
surely  not  Christian.  Our  prayers  and  our  hymns 
are  full  of  the  contrary.  We  are  beset  not  only  by 
"fightings"  but  by  "fears" — "within;  without;"  by 
"many  a  conflict-,  many  a  doubt" ;  we  pray  to  be  de 
livered  from  this  same  doubt.  The  whole  body  of 
Christian  doctrine  is  permeated  with  the  idea  that 
the  true  believer  is  likely  to  be  beset  by  doubts  of  all 
kinds,  and  that  it  is  his  duty,  despite  all  this,  to  be 
lieve. 

And  yet  there  are  many  who  will  not  call  them 
selves  Christians  so  long  as  they  can  not  construct  a 
rigid  demonstration  of  every  Christian  doctrine. 
There  are  many  thoughtful  men  who  call  themselves 
Agnostics  just  because  they  can  not  be  mathemati 
cally  sure  of  religious  truth.  Some  of  these  men  are 
better  Christians  than  many  that  are  so  named. 
That  they  hold  aloof  from  Christian  fellowship  is 
due  to  their  mistaken  notion  of  the  nature  of  belief. 
The  more  is  the  pity.  Now  let  us  go  back  for  a 
moment  to  our  basket  of  pebbles.  We  have  seen  that 
the  action  of  the  guesser  is  based  to  some  extent  on 
his  knowledge  of  the  contents  of  the  basket.  In  other 
words,  he  has  grounds  for  the  belief  by  which  his  act 


332  LIBKAKIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

is  conditioned.  Persons  may  act  without  grounds; 
it  may  be  necessary  for  them  so  to  do.  Even  in  this 
case  there  may  be  a  sort  of  blind  substitute  for  belief. 
A  man,  pursued  by  a  bear,  comes  to  a  fork  in  the  road. 
He  knows  nothing  about  either  branch ;  one  may  lead 
to  safety  and  one  to  a  jungle.  But  he  has  to  choose, 
and  choose  at  once;  and  his  choice  represents  his  bid 
for  safety.  There  is  plenty  of  action  of  this  sort  in 
the  world;  if  we  would  avoid  the  necessity  for  it  we 
must  do  a  little  preliminary  investigation;  and  if  we 
can  not  find  definitely  where  the  roads  lead,  we  may 
at  least  hit  upon  some  idea  of  which  is  the  safest. 

But  with  all  our  investigation  we  shall  find  that 
we  must  rely  in  the  end  on  our  trust  in  some  person ; 
either  ourselves  or  someone  else.  Even  the  certainty 
of  the  mathematical  formula  depends  on  our  con 
fidence  in  the  sanity  of  our  own  mental  processes. 
The  man  who  sees  the  basket  filled  with  white  pebbles 
must  trust  the  accuracy  of  his  eyesight.  If  he  relies 
for  his  information  on  what  someone  else  told  him,  he 
must  trust  not  only  that  other's  eyesight,  but  his 
memory,  his  veracity,  his  friendliness.  And  yet  one 
may  be  far  safer  in  trusting  another  than  in  relying 
on  his  own  unaided  powers.  Securus  judicat  orbis 
terra  nun,  says  the  old  Latin.  "The  world's  judg 
ment  is  safe."  We  have  learned  to  modify  this,  for 
we  have  seen  world  judgments  that  are  manifestly  in 
correct.  The  world  thought  the  earth  was  flat.  It 
thought  there  were  witches,  and  it  burned  them. 
Here  individuals  simply  followed  one  another  like 
sheep;  and  all,  like  sheep,  went  astray.  But  where 
there  is  a  real,  independent  judgment  on  the  part  of 
each  member  of  a  group,  and  all  agree,  that  is  better 
proof  of  its  correctness  than  most  individual  in 
vestigations  could  furnish.  My  watch,  of  the  best 
make  and  carefully  regulated,  indicates  five  o'clock, 


A    WOKD    TO    BELIEVEKS  333 

but  if  I  meet  five  friends,  each  of  whom  tells  me,  in 
dependently,  that  it  is  six,  I  conclude  that  my  watch 
is  wrong.  There  was  never  a  more  careful  scientific 
investigation  than  that  by  which  a  French  physicist 
thought  he  had  established  the  existence  of  what  he 
called  the  "N  ray" — examined  its  properties  and 
measured  its  constants.  He  read  paper  after  paper 
before  learned*  bodies  as  his  research  progressed.  He 
challenged  the  interest  of  his  brother  scientists  on 
three  continents.  And  yet  he  was  entirely  wrong: 
there  never  was  any  "N  ray."  The  man  had  deceived 
himself.  The  failure  of  hundreds  to  see  as  he  did 
weighed  more  than  his  positive  testimony  that  he  saw 
what  he  thought  he  saw.  Here  as  elsewhere  our  view 
of  what  may  be  the  truth  is  based  on  trust.  If  you 
trust  the  French  physicist,  you  will  still  believe  in  the 
"N  ray."  Creeds  we  are  told,  are  outworn,  and  yet  we 
are  confronted,  from  birth  to  death,  with  situations 
that  imperiously  require  action  of  some  sort.  Every 
act  that  responds  must  be  based  on  belief  of  some 
kind.  Creeds  are  only  expressions  of  belief.  The 
kind  of  Creed  that  is  outworn  (and  this  is  doubtless 
what  intelligent  persons  mean  when  they  make  this 
statement)  is  the  parrot  creed,  the  form  of  words 
without  meaning,  the  statement  of  belief  without  any 
grounds  behind  it  or  any  action  in  front  of  it.  For 
this  the  modern  churchman  has  no  use. 

And  if  he  desires  to  avoid  the  parrot  creed,  he 
must  surely  inform  himself  regarding  the  meaning  of 
its  articles  and  the  grounds  on  which  they  are  held. 
More;  he  must  satisfy  himself  of  the  particular  mean 
ing  that  they  have  for  him  and  the  personal  grounds 
on  which  he  is  to  hold  them.  This  is  the  reason  why 
such  a  course  as  that  which  you  complete  to-night  is 
necessary  and  valuable.  I  have  heard  instruction  of 
this  kind  deprecated  as  likely  to  bring  disturbing  ele- 


334  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

ments  into  the  mind.  One  may  doubtless  change 
from  belief  to  skepticism  by  too  much  searching.  It 
used  to  be  a  standing  joke  in  Yale  College,  when  I 
was  a  student  there,  that  a  well-known  professor, 
reputed  to  be  an  Atheist,  had  been  perfectly  orthodox 
until  he  had  heard  President  Porter's  lectures  on  the 
"Evidences  of  Christianity."  But  seriously,  this  ob 
jection  is  but  another  phase  of  the  fallacy  at  which 
we  have  already  glanced — that  doubts  are  fatal  to 
belief.  "I  am  certain  that  the  professor  in  question 
might  have  examined  in  detail  every  one  of  President 
Porter's  "Evidences,"  and  found  them  wanting,  only 
to  discover  clearer  and  stronger  grounds  of  belief 
elsewhere — in  his  mere  confidence  in  others,  perhaps. 
Or  he  might  have  turned  pragmatist  and  believed  in 
Christianity  because  it  "worked" — a  valid  reason  in 
this  case  doubtless,  but  not  always  to  be  depended  on ; 
because  the  Father  of  Lies  sometimes  makes  things 
"work"  himself — at  least  temporarily. 

But  if  examining  into  the  grounds  of  his  belief 
makes  a  man  honestly  give  up  that  belief,  then  I  bid 
him  God-speed.  I  may  weep  for  him,  but  I  cannot 
help  believing  that  he  stands  better  with  his  Maker 
for  being  honest  with  himself  than  if  he  had  gone  on 
with  his  parrot  belief  that  meant  absolutely  nothing. 
I  can  not  feel  that  the  Aztecs  who  were  baptized  by 
the  followers  of  Cortes  were  any  more  believers  in 
Christianity  after  the  ceremony  than  they  were  be 
fore.  It  seems  to  me,  however  that  a  Christian,  exam 
ining  faithfully  the  grounds  of  his  belief,  will  usually 
have  that  belief  strengthened,  and  that  a  churchman, 
examining  the  doctrines  of  the  church  will  be  sim 
ilarly  upheld. 

Not  that  church  instruction  should  be  one-sided. 
The  teaching  that  tends  to  make  us  believe  that  every 
intelligent  man  thinks  as  we  do  reacts  against  itself. 


A    WORD    TO    BELIEVERS  335 

It  is  like  the  unfortunate  temperance  teaching  that 
represents  the  liking  for  wine  as  always  acquired. 
When  the  pupil  comes  to  taste  wine  and  finds  that  he 
likes  it  at  once,  he  concludes  that  the  whole  body  of 
instruction  in  the  physiology  of  alcohol  is  false  and 
acts  accordingly.  When  a  boy  is  taught  that  there  is 
nothing  of  value  beyond  his  own  church,  or  nothing 
of  value  outside  of  Christianity,  he  will  think  less  of 
his  church,  and  less  of  Christianity  when  he  finds  in 
telligent,  upright,  lovable  outsiders.  I  look  back 
with  horror  on  some  of  the  books,  piously  prepared 
under  the  auspices  of  the  S.  P.  C.  K.  in  London,  that 
I  used  to  take  home  from  Sunday  School.  In  them 
we  were  told  that  a  good  man  outside  the  church  was 
worse  than  a  bad  man  in  it.  If  that  was  not  the 
teaching  in  the  book,  it  was  at  least  the  form  in  which 
it  took  lodgment  in  my  boyish  brain.  Thank  God  it 
never  found  permanent  foothold  there.  Instead,  I 
hold  in  my  memory  the  Eastern  story  of  God's  rebuke 
to  Abraham  when  he  expelled  the  Fire  Worshipper 
from  his  tent.  "Could  you  not  bear  with  him  for  one 
hour?  Lo!  I  have  borne  with  him  these  forty 
years !" 

I  have  always  thought  that  a  knowledge  of  what 
our  neighbors  believe  is  an  excellent  balance-wheel  to 
our  own  beliefs  and  that  our  own  beliefs,  so  balanced, 
will  be  saner  and  more  restrained.  It  would  be  well, 
I  think,  if  we  could  have  a  survey  of  the  world's 
religions,  setting  down  in  parallel  columns  all  the 
faiths  of  mankind.  If  this  is  too  great  a  task  we 
might  begin  with  a  survey  of  Christianity,  set  down 
in  the  same  way.  I  believe  that  the  results  of  such  a 
survey  might  surprise  us,  showing,  as  I  think  it  would 
do,  the  many  fundamentals  that  we  hold  in  c.ommon 
and  the  trivial  nature  of  some  of  the  barriers  that 
appear  to  separate  us. 


o36  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

In  your  course,  just  completed,  you  have  had  such 
a  survey,  I  doubt  not,  of  the  beliefs  of  our  own  be 
loved  church.  Where  her  divines  have  differed,  you 
have  had  the  varying  opinions  spread  before  you. 
You  have  not  been  told  that  the  mind  of  every  church 
man  has  always  been  a  replica  of  the  mind  of  every 
other  churchman.  Personally,  I  feel  grateful  that 
this  has  not  been  the  case.  As  I  say  my  creed  and 
begin  "I  believe  in  God,  the  Father  Almighty,"  I 
realize  that  the  aspect  of  even  such  a  basic  belief  as 
this,  is  the  same  in  no  two  minds ;  that  it  shifts  from 
land  to  land  and  from  age  to  age.  I  know  that  God, 
as  he  is,  is  past  human  knowledge  and  that  until  we 
see  Him  face  to  face  we  can  not  all  mean  just  the 
same  thing  when  we  repeat  this  article  of  belief.  But 
I  realize  also  that  this  is  not  due  to  the  mutability  of 
the  Almighty  but  to  man's  variability.  The  Gods  of 
St.  Jerome,  of  Thomas  Carlyle  and  of  William  James 
are  different;  but  that  is  because  these  men  had  dif 
ferent  types  of  minds.  Behind  their  human  ideas 
stands  God  himself — "the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and 
forever."  So  we  may  go  through  the  creed ;  so  we  may 
study,  as  you  have  been  doing,  the  beliefs  of  the 
church.  Everywhere  we  see  the  evidences  of  the 
working,  upon  fallible  human  minds  of  a  dim  appre 
ciation  of  something  beyond  full  human  knowledge— 

"That  one  far-off  divine  event 

Toward  which  the  Whole  Creation  moves." 

We  have  a  wonderful  church,  my  friends.  It  is  a 
church  to  live  with;  a  church  to  be  proud  of.  Those 
who  miss  what  we  are  privileged  to  enjoy  are  missing 
something  from  the  fulness  of  life.  We  have  not 
broken  with  the  historic  continuity  of  the  Christian 
faith :  there  is  no  chasm,  filled  with  wreckage,  be 
tween  us  and  the  fathers  of  the  church.  Above  all  we 
have  enshrined  our  beliefs  in  a  marvellous  liturgy, 


A    WORD    TO    BELIEVERS  337 

which  is  ever  old  and  ever  new,  and  which  had  the 
good  fortune  to  be  put  into  English  at  a  day  when  the 
force  of  expression  in  our  Mother  tongue  was 
peculiarly  virile,  yet  peculiarly  lovely.  I  know  of 
nothing  in  the  whole  range  of  English  literature  that 
will  compare  with  the  collects  as  contained  in  our 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  for  beauty,  for  form,  for 
condensation  and  for  force.  They  are  a  string  of 
pearls.  And  indeed,  what  I  have  said  of  them  ap 
plies  to  the  whole  book.  When  I  see  Commit 
tees  of  well-meaning  divines  trying  to  tamper  with  it, 
I  shudder  as  I  might  if  I  witnessed  the  attempt  of  a 
guild  of  modern  sculptors  to  improve  the  Venus  of 
Milo  by  chipping  off  a  bit  here  and  adding  something 
there.  Good  reasons  exist  for  changes,  doubtless; 
but  I  feel  that  we  have  here  a  work  of  art,  of  divine 
art;  and  art  is  one  of  God's  ways  of  reaching  the  hu 
man  heart.  We  are  proud  that  we  have  not  discarded 
it  from  our  church  buildings,  from  our  altars,  from 
the  music  of  our  choirs.  Let  us  treat  tenderly  our 
great  book  of  Common  Prayer,  like  that  other  great 
masterpiece  of  divine  literary  art,  the  King  James 
version  of  the  Bible.  There  are  plenty  of  better 
translations ;  there  is  not  one  that  has  the  same  magic 
of  words  to  fire  the  imagination  and  melt  the  heart. 
These  are  all  trite  things  to  say  to  churchmen :  I 
have  tried,  on  occasion,  to  say  them  to  non-church 
men,  but  they  do  not  seem  to  respond.  There  are 
those  who  rejoice  in  their  break  with  historic  con 
tinuity,  who  look  upon  a  written  form  of  service  with 
horror.  It  is  well,  as  I  have  said,  for  us  to  realize 
that  our  friends  hold  these  opinions.  One  can  not 
strengthen  his  muscles  in  a  tug  of  war  unless  some 
one  is  pulling  the  other  way.  The  savor  of  religion, 
like  that  of  life  itself,  is  in  its  contrasts.  I  thank  God 
that  we  have  them  even  within  our  own  Communion. 


338  LIBRARIAN'S    OPEN    SHELF 

We  are  high-church  and  low-church  and  broad- 
church.  We  burn  incense  and  we  wear  Geneva 
gowns.  This  diversity  is  not  to  be  condemned.  What 
is  to  be  deprecated  is  the  feeling  among  some  of  us 
that  the  diversity  should  give  place  to  uniformity — to 
uniformity  of  their  own  kind,  of  course.  To  me,  this 
would  be  a  calamity.  Let  us  continue  to  make  room 
in  our  church  for  individuality.  God  never  intended 
men  to  be  pressed  down  in  one  mold  of  sameness.  In 
the  last  analysis,  each  of  us  has  his  own  religious  be 
liefs.  The  doctrines  of  our  church,  or  of  any  church 
are  but  a  composite  portrait  of  these  beliefs.  But 
when  one  takes  such  a  portrait  throughout  all  lands 
and  in  all  time,  and  the  features  keep  true,  one  can 
not  help  regarding  them  as  the  divine  lineaments. 

This  is  how  I  would  have  you  regard  the  beliefs  of 
our  church,  as  you  have  studied  them  throughout  this 
course — as  our  particular  composite  photograph  of 
the  face  of  God,  as  He  has  impressed  it  on  the  hearts 
and  minds  of  each  one  of  us.  I  commend  this  view 
to  those  who  have  no  reverence  for  beliefs,  particu 
larly  when  they  are  formulated  as  creeds.  These  per 
sons  mean  that  they  have  no  regard  for  group  beliefs 
but  only  for  those  of  the  individual.  Each  has  his 
own  beliefs,  and  he  must  have  confidence  in  them,  for 
they  are  the  grounds  on  wliich  he  acts,  if  he  is  a 
normal  man.  Even  the  faith  of  an  Agnostic  is  based 
on  a  very  positive  belief.  As  for  me,  I  feel  that  the 
churchman  goes  one  step  beyond  him :  he  even  doubts 
Doubt,  Said  Socrates:  "I  know  nothing  except  this 
one  thing,  that  I  know  nothing.  The  rest  of  you  are 
ignorant  even  of  this."  Socrates  was  a  great  man. 
If  he  had  been  greater  still,  he  might  have  said  some 
thing  like  this :  "I  freely  acknowledge  that  a  mathe 
matical  formula  can  not  satisfy  all  the  cases  that  we 
discuss.  Rut  neither  can  it  be  stated  mathematically 


A    WORD    TO    BELIEVERS  339 

that  they  are  all  unknowable.  I  am  not  even  sure 
that  I  know  nothing. "  Surely,  under  these  circum 
stances,  we  may  give  over  looking  for  mathematical 
demonstrations  and  believe  a  few  things  on  our  own 
account — that  our  children  love  us — that  our  eyes  do 
not  deceive  us ;  that  the  soul  lives  on ;  that  God  rules 
all.  We  may  put  our  faith  in  what  our  own  church 
teaches  us,  even  as  a  child  trusts  his  father  though 
he  can  not  construct  a  single  syllogism  that  will  in 
crease  that  trust. 

This  does  not  mean  that  we  shall  not  benefit  by 
examining  the  articles  of  our  faith ;  by  learning  what 
they  are,  what  they  mean  and  what  others  have 
thought  of  them.  The  churchman  must  combine,  in 
his  mental  habits,  all  that  is  best  of  the  Conservative 
and  the  Radical.  While  holding  fast  that  which  is 
good  he  must  keep  an  open  mind  toward  every  change 
that  may  serve  to  bring  him  nearer  to  the  truth  or 
give  him  a  clearer  vision  of  it. 

How  we  can  insure  this  better  than  by  such  an  in 
stitution  as  the  Church  School  for  Religious  Instruc 
tion  I  am  sure  I  do  not  see.  May  God  guide  it  and 
aid  it  in  its  work ! 


INDEX 


Abraham,   Story  of,  335 

Action,    test    of    belief,    332 

Ade,  George,   110,  170;     fables     in 

picture  plays,     319 
Adults    and    children,      compared, 

Advertisement  of  ideas,  127 

Aldrich,   T.    B.,     322 

Alger,  Horatio,  16,  174 

America,  Fluid  customs  in,     224 

"America",  hymn,     191 

American  Academy  of  Sciences, 
57 

American  ancestry,  179;  architec 
ture,  218;  art,  217;  music,  218; 
philosophy,  220;  religion,  219; 
thought,  tendencies  of,  213 

American  Association  for  the  Ad 
vancement  of  Science,  50 

American  Library  Association,     51 

American   Library     Institute,      52 

American  readers,     42 

Americanization,    17,   73 

Americanization    of    England,    225 

Ancestry,  American,  179 

Anglo-Saxon  ancestry,  181 

Architecture,   American,     218 

Archives,   family,   184 

Army,  international,     159 

Art,   American,    217;  effect   of,    163 

Art,    Early    forms    of,    37 

Association,   value  of,   45 

Atoms  of  energy  and  action,     122 

Attractiveness  a  selective  fea 
ture,  26 

Austen,   Jane,    176 

Author,  Function  of,   67 

Authors   Club,   N.Y.,    51 

Auto-suggestion  in   drugs,    233 

Aviation,    Newcomb's    opinion    of, 


Belief,   What   is?  329 

Bennett,    Arnold,    175 

Bergson,  Henri,  227 

Bible,  King  James  version,     337 

Birth  of  a  nation;     picture  play, 

322 

Book-stores,  disappearance  of,  238 
Books  in   selective   education,    27 
"Book-Taught  Bilkins",   89,   98 
Book-titles,   Possessive     case     in, 

19 

Boston   tea-party,   183 
Branch  libraries,     Reasons     given 

for  using,  11 
British   Association,   307 
Brooklyn    Public   Library,    4 
Brown,    Susannah  H.,     who     was 

she?  281 


Browsing,    27;   uses  of,   104 
Bryce,   James,   quoted,    216 
Buildings,    M'onumental,    141 
Bulwer-Lytton,    E.    G.    E.    L., 
Burbank,   Luther,   24 


Cabiria;  motion  picture  plav,  319, 

322 

Captions  in  motion  pictures,   318 
Carnegie,  Andrew,  77 
Carnegie   Institution,    85,    306 
Cartoonist,    Anecdote   of,    294 
Centre,   What  is   a?   145 
Centralized  associations,  58 
Certainty   and   belief,    330 
Chaucer,  293 
Chautauqua,    265 

Chemistry,   New  drugs  from,     232 
Chicago    Evening     Post,      quoted. 

109 

Chicago,  Field  houses  in,  148 
Chicago    Women's      Club,      Paper 

before,  197 

Children's    editions,    6;    rooms,    31 
Christian   Science   and   drugs,    233 
Christianity,    331 
Christmas    book   shows,    170 
Church    School    of     religious      in 
struction,   329 

Church,  Use  of  symbols  by,   188 
Churches    of    Christ    in    America. 

Federation    of,    220 
Circulation    by    volumes,    6:    pub 
licity    value    of,    142;    tables,    7, 
8 
Circulation,    Publicity     value      of, 

142 

Civil  Engineers,   Society  of,   52 
Civil  War,  Notions  of,  180 
Classroom  libraries,   29 
Clergy,    Slight  influence  of,   13 
"Close-ups"    in    motion      pictures, 

317 

Clubs  that  meet  in  libraries,  148 
Clubwomen's  reading,   259 
Colloquial    speech,    92 
Color-photography  in  motion   pic 
tures,   327 

Combat,  Settlement  by,  158 
Commercial  travellers,    198 
Commission    government.    216 
Constitution,    United    States,      50. 

214;   amendment  of,   226 
Continuum.   116 
Cook,    Dr.    Frederick,    95 
Copyright    conference.    53 
Courses  of  reading,    268 
Court,  International,  159 
Creeds,  Uses  of,  333 
Crowd-psychology  on  a  ferry,  247 


342 


INDEX 


Dante,    46 

D'Annunzio,   G.,  322 

Delivery   stations   in   drug-  stores, 

Democracy  a   result,    72;  and  an 
cestry,      186;      and      despotism. 
213;   conditions  of,   209 
Department  stores,  238 
Despotism    and    democracy,      213 
Dickens,  pathos  of,  175 
Disarmament,    161 
Discontinuity  of  the  universe,  124 
Distribution  of  books,  67,  129 
Distributor,    Library  as   a,    198 
Divorce,    Freedom  of,   217 
Don  Quixote,  Heine  on,  173 
Drug-addiction,    234 
Drugs  and  the  man,  229 

Eaton,   Walter   Pritchard,   quoted, 

316 

Eclecticism    in   America,    213 
Economic  advertising,   130 
Economic    writings    of    Newcomb, 

86 

Education,  American,  218;  in  rec 
reation,  100;  modern  methods 
of,  63;  of  the  community,  243; 
of  the  sexes,  273;  post-scholas 
tic,  30;  selective,  23,  65;  through 
books,  90 
Efficiency  in  association,  48; 

What   is?    257 
Elizabethan   drama,    323 
Energetics,    Theory   of,    114 
Energy,   Atomic   theories  of,   113 
England   an     elective     monarchy, 
214;      rigid      customs      in,      224; 
source   consciousness   in,    182 
Ephemeral,    Meaning   of,    36 
Episcopalians,    220 
Eyes,  injured  by  small  type,   302 

Fairy   tales,    75 
Falsity   in    books,    39 
Feminist  movement,   267 
Flag,    what   it    stands    for,    187 
Fiction,    39;    interest    in,    137;    in 
toxication    by,    40,    100;    uses    of, 
35 

Fluids,    Mixture   of,    118 
Force    symbolized   by   flag,    194 
Ford,    Henry,    237 
Freedom,    What   is?   192 


Gallicism   in   book-titles,    22 
Gary   system,    246 
Genealogy,    American,    179 
Gibbs,    J.    Willard,    quoted.    118 
Good-will,    Influence   of,    17 
Government,    Federal,    213 
Gravitation,    Law  of,    83 
Gray's    Elegy,    111 
Greek    tragedy,    324 
Group-action,   45;  on  a  ferry,     217 

Hall,    G.   Stanley,   quoted,   253 
Harvard   Classics,   109 


Heine,   Heinrich,   quoted,    173 
Henry,    Joseph,    80 
Heredity,    and    memory,    73-    His 
tory   and,    179 
Hertzian   waves,    121 
Hilgard,   Julius,   80 
Hill,    G.    W.,    84 
Holmes,    Mary  J.,    104 
Homer,    Methods  of,    198 
Honesty,    Lack   of,    32 
Huey,   Book  by,   305 
Hunt,   Leigh,    109 
Huret,   Jules,    41 

Identity,   Meaning  of,    114 

Impeachment,    214 

Indicator,    in      English      libraries, 

Indifference  to  books,   133 
Information    in    books,    94 
Inspiration    from    books,    101 
Intemperance    in    reading,    40,    100 
Interest,    Importance    of,    287,    280- 

Necessity   of,    5,    137 
International    agreements    in    sci 
ence,    85 

Internationalism,    159 
Intoxication   by  fiction,   40,   100 
Ivanhoe,   175 


James,    William,    138:    founder    of 
pragmatism,  221;  quoted,   287 


Keith,    Cleveland,    84 
Kent,    WTilliam,    quoted,    229 
Kepler,    quoted,    177 
Kinemacolor    process,    327 
Kinetic    theory,    120 
Koopman,    H.    L.,    308 

Lagrange,    114 

Languages,  written  and  spoken, 
90 

Large    type,    Books    in,    301 

Law,    Enforcement    of,    158 

Le  Bon,   Gustave,   45 

Lee,    Gerald    Stanley,    77 

Legibility    of    type,    306 

Libbey,    Laura   Jean,   41,    104 

Libraries,  Economic  features  of, 
67 

Library  associations.  49;  Non- 
partisanship  of,  70,  96,  152; 
Private  basis  of,  169 

Lindsay,    Vachell,    321 

Lines,  Length  of  on  printed 
page,  309 

Liouville's   theorem,    123 

Lippmann,  Walter,  quoted,  216, 
228 

Literature  an  art,  165;  evalu 
ation  of,  95;  static  and  dynam 
ic,  35 

Los    Angeles    Public    Library,     96 

Lower-case    letters,    307 

Loyalists,    United    Empire,    180 

Lummis,    Chas.    F.,    06 

Lunar  theory.    84 


INDEX 


343 


Magazines,    Support    of,    68 

Magical   remedies,   233 

Magnet,    Definition   of,    87 

Make-up    in   motion   pictures,    317 

M'alemployment,     229 

Maxwell   Jas.    Clerk,    115 

Mayflower,    The,    183 

Medical  Record,   Strasburg,   305 

Meetings    in    libraries,    147 

Memory,    Latent,    74 

Meredith,   Geo.,    110 

Mexican   commission,    194 

Military  associations,   48 

Mill,   John   Stuart,    243,    244 

Mind,  Male  and  female  types, 
272 

Moderation,  Lack  of  in  America, 
235 

Mohammedanism,    219 

Molecular  theory,    115 

Moon's   motion,    84 

Morals,    Eclecticism  in,   216 

Morgan,   J.    P.,    169 

Motives   of  library   users,    11 

Moving   pictures,    313  • 

Municipal  ownership  and  opera 
tion,  154 

Music,  American,  218 


N-ray.    333 

Narrative,  earliest  literary  form, 
37 

National  Academy  of  Fine  Arts, 
57 

National  Academy   of   Science.    52 

National  Education  Association, 
50;  Address  before,  145 

Nautical    Almanac,    80 

New  country,   What  is?  182 

New   England   Society,    179 

New  York,  Free  Circulating  Li 
brary,  19 

New  York,  Library  support  in, 
200;  West  side  readers,  42 

New  York  Public  Library,  11, 
30,  220 

Newcomb,    Simon,    Sketch    of,    79 

Newspapers,     36 

Newton,     Isaac,     83 

Non-partisanship    of   library,    250 

Norris,    Frank,    322 


Omar  Khayyam,    108 

Open    shelves,    104;    Origin   of,    225 

Optic,  Oliver,   174 

Ostwald,    Wilhelm,    114 


Pacifism,    157 

Pageant    of    St.    Louis,    188 
Pantomime    in    the     motion     pic 
ture,    320 
Papers,    Ready-made,    for     clubs, 

270;    scientific,    275 
Pater,    Walter,    168 
Paulist   fathers,    220 
Pauperization,    intellectual,    68 
Pendleton,    A.    M.,    quoted,    140 
Perry,    Bliss,    quoted,     211 


Pharmacy,   School  of,  address  to, 

229 

Philadelphia    Free    Library,      Ad 
dress    at,    67 

Philosophy,    an    interesting    sub 
ject,  133,  138;  in  America,  220 
Phonograph,    Uses  of,    94 
Physics  made  interesting,   138 
Pickford,    Mary,     247;     317 
Planck,   Max,   113,   120 
Planets,   Orbits  of,   83 
Players'   Club,    N.Y.,    51 
Pocahontas,    183 
Poincarfi,    Henri,    113.    120 
"Poison    labels"    for    books,    96 
Porter,    Noah,    334 
Posse,    International,    159 
Possessive    case,    Use   of,    19 
Pragmatism    in    America,    221 
Prayer   Book   as    literature,    337 
Prescott,   William   H.,    95 
Press,   Slight  influence  of,  13 
Pride,    Personal   and   group,    185 
Princeton   University,    219 
Printing   Art,    magazine,    308 
Programitis,    club   disease,    286 
Programmes,    Club,    268,    280,    295 
Public   as    library    owners,    205 
Public   Library,     169;     eclecticism 

of,   221;  people's  share  in,    197 
Publicity,    Library,    140 
Publisher,    Function   of,   67 
Puritanism,    219 

Quanta,    121;    hypothesis  of,    113 

Race-record,    Library   as   a,   74 
Radio-activity,    231 
Rayleigh's    Law,    120 
Readers,   Do   they  read?   3 
Reading,    mechanism   of,    91;    skill 

in,    135 

Realism  in  education,  246;  in  mo 
tion    pictures,    314 
Recall,    earliest   form  of,    213 
Records,    varieties    of,    94 
Recreation    through    books,    99 
Religion    in   America,    219 
Renewal,  Preservation  by,  97 
Repetition  a  test  of  art,   166 
Reprinting,   Use  of,  98 
Re-reading,    Art  of,   163 
Residual  personality,   290 
Resonators,    121 
Revolution,   American,   notions  of, 

180;   versus   evolution,   279 
Revue    Scientifique,    113 
Roethlin,    Barbara    E.,    306 
Roman  Catholic   Church,    220 
Roman  viewpoint  in  history,    181 
Rome,    decadence    of,    227 
Rousiers,  Paul  de.,  quoted,  55,  56, 
57 


St.    Louis   Academy     of     Science, 

paper   before,    113 
St.    Louis,   library  tax  in,   200 
St.    Louis     Public     Library.      140, 

254,    302;    meetings   in,    150 


344 


INDEX 


Sampling    books,    110 

Scenery  in  motion  pictures,  317; 
in  Elizabethan  drama,  323; 
made  of  motion  pictures,  327 

School   libraries,    29 

School,  Non-partisanship  of,  70; 
Community  use  of,  155 

Schoolmen  of  N.Y.,  Paper  be 
fore,  23 

Scientific  societies,    52 

"See  America  First"  movement, 
191 

Selection  in  nature,  23;  mechan 
ical,  47 

Selective    education,    65 

Sex  in  library  use,  15 

Sexes,    differences  of,    272 

Shakespeare,  178;  changes  in, 
293;  rank  of,  168;  unavailable 
for  stage,  323 

Shaw,    Edw.    R.,    304 

Social    Centre    movement,    145 

Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
82 

Society  of  Illuminating  Engi 
neers,  57 

Socrates,    quoted,    338 

Sorolla,    164 

Southern  views  of  Civil  War,   180 

Spelling    reform,    93 

Staginess    of    the    theatre,    315 

Standard  Dictionary,   87 

Standards  in  literature,    36 

Statistics    of    reading,    actual,    4 

Story-telling,  37;  extraordinary, 
282 

Structure    of   energy,    118 

Superficiality,  meaning  of,  105; 
269 

Swift.   Dean,    208 

Symbols,    Use    of,    188 


Teacher,    influence   of,    13,    243 
Text-books,    Defects    of.    270 
Therapeutics,    Changes   in,    230 
Tocqueville,    de.,    quoted,    56 
Toronto,  University  of,   220 
Trade-literature,    98 
Tradition,    Uses    of,    93 
Travel,    Foreign,    in  United  States, 

41 

Trollope,   Anthony,   176 
Tutorial   system,    219 
Tyndall,   John,    138 
Type    sizes,      Standardization    of, 

'304 


-Un-American,    what   is?    226 
Unfitness,   Elimination  of,   24 
Union,    symbolized  by  flag,   189 
Unity    of    p'ace    on    the    stage,    324 
Universal   City,    317 

Value,   Structure  of,   119 

Van   Dyke*  Henry,   quoted,   193 

Verne,    Jules,    86 

Violence,    systematization    of,    157 

Vision,    Conservation    of,    305 

Volumes,    Statistics   by,    4 

Walton,   Isaac,   165 

War,    European,    209,    249:    status 

of.    158 

Wesley,    John,    46 
West,      source-consciousness      of, 

182 

White,  Gilbert,  165 
Wien,  Wilhelm,  122 
Women's  Clubs,  210;  reading  of, 

259 
Woodbury,   George  E.,   quoted,   219 


Taste,  literary.   171;  origin  of,  4 
Tax,    library,    200 


Yale      Alumni      Weeklv.      quoted, 
292 


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